Happily Ever After

Sermon as preached at Lambs and Evington UMC 10/28/12

 

Scripture Job 42

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful step-daughter named Cinderella who lived with her step sisters and evil step-mother. Cinderella was treated badly and forced to do all of the labor in the house while her step-sisters prepared for a extravagant ball in which they hoped the prince would ask for their hand in marriage. With the help of her fairy God-mother, Cinderella was able to go to the ball, swept the prince off of his feet, but as the clock struck midnight she had to flee because all of the fairy God mother’s magic would wear off. In her dash she left her glass slipper, so the prince went around the village looking for the owner of that slipper. We all know that the prince found Cinderella they got married and the lived happily ever after.

            Or how about another one.  Once upon a time there lived a beautiful girl named Snow White. One day the queen of the kingdom asked her magic mirror who was the fairest of all the land. Expecting to have her name uttered by the mirror, the queen was horrified when the mirror said it was Snow White and not her.  Bitter and angry the queen set out to get rid of Snow White and tricked her into eating a poison apple that put her into a deep sleep. The prince found Snow White in her deep trance and kissed her, and Snow White was healed because of the kiss from her one true love, and they lived happily ever after.

            Or one final one, one that is more to my liking. Once upon a time, In a galaxy far far away there was a young man whose family was killed by the evil empire. This young studied in the art of being a jedi and went to fight the evil empire and in particular one of the leaders of the empire Darth Vader. This young man, Luke, fought Darth Vader only to find out that Darth was his father. Craziness ensues, there’s a huge space station built to destroy the rebels and the Emperor of the Empire comes to oversee its completion. As the Emperor fights Luke, Darth Vader sacrifices himself to save his son, the Death Star was destroyed and they all lived happily ever  after.

             Happily ever after; if fairy tales taught us anything, or in my case if Star Wars taught me anything, it is that in the end everyone is supposed to live happily ever after.  There is a flow to the stories, starting with Once upon a time, where we are introduced to the main characters. Then there is some sort of conflict. Cinderella wants to go to the ball but can’t, Snow White is put into a deep sleep, and Luke Skywalker’s family is killed and a battle ensues between the Rebel forces and the Evil Empire. And then we know that in every fairy tale there is supposed to be a Happily ever after. The conflict gets resolved. Cinderella marries the prince, Snow White is awoken by the kiss of the prince, and the emperor is killed and the Death Star is destroyed. This natural flow of stories has been ingrained in us. So much so that it is not only what we expect from fairy tales, but it is what we expect in real life as well.

            For this reason when we read the book of Job we expect to find the very same pattern to the story, and for the most part we find it to be true. First we are introduced to Job, there is that moment of Once upon a time, and listen to the first chapter of the book and hear how similar it is. “There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.”  This sounds almost exactly like beginning of fairy tales, where we are introduced to Job, and we are told that Job is the good guy. Then we know that there is supposed to be conflict, and is there ever for Job. We have the wager between the devil and God. We have Job losing his livestock, servants, and even his children. We have Job covered with painful sores all over his body, and we have Job’s wife and friends not believing that Job is an innocent man.  We find Job in an utter state of despair questioning God, and we have God responding to Job putting Job in his place. Yet through it all, when we read the book of Job we read it expecting and anticipating the moment when all is made right in the life of Job and he is able to live happily ever after.

            And so we come to that moment in our passage today.  After being scolded by the Lord, after  being put in his place, Job submits himself to the will of God. Job humbles himself, and says , “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.³‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’ Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.⁴‘Hear, and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me.’⁵I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you;⁶therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes.” Job even went on to pray for his friends, the same friends that had betrayed him. Job prays to God asking God not to punish them, And after this Job has his fortune restored to him. His brothers and sisters come and have a meal with him and comfort him, and in the midst of this each one of them gave Job money and gold. The Lord gave back to more livestock than Job had ever had before. Job had more children both sons and daughters, and we are told that his daughters were the most beautiful in the land. And then the scripture says, “After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations.¹⁷And Job died, old and full of days.”  And Job died old and full of days. That phrase alone sounds eerily familiar to and he lived happily ever after. So this is! We have the introduction, the conflict, and now finally here in the final chapter we have that happily ever after moment, right?   Well yes, but…….

            But what, you may be asking yourself.  This for sure is an instance of happily ever after; but if we only read the end of Job on this superficial level, then we set ourselves up for a very dangerous interpretation of the text. The temptation is to read this and to say that if we just endure any hardship that happens in our lives, then in the end God is going to bless us and help us prosper in this lifetime. Unfortunately this theology has been used for decades, especially by many televangelists. We know how it goes, a story will be told about a sweet, God fearing woman who was struggling and all she had left was $25, and she gave that to the televangelist’s church and then God blesses the woman with hundreds of thousands of dollars, a new house and a new car.  Then they ask you to send in your money and see how the God is going to bless your life. You may still be wondering, what’s wrong with that, but let us consider all of the people who are also in utter despair, who send in their money, who trust and believe in God, who continuously pray for God to bless their life, and yet they remain in poverty for the rest of their lives. How must they feel? They probably say to themselves if only I prayed more, I must not have believed hard enough, or I must have done something wrong to deserve this. After all this is the same theology that Job is fighting against throughout the whole book. It is his friends and wife who tell him that he must have doing something wrong. It is his friends and wife that tell him that he is being punished for not having enough faith. It is this type of theology that makes Job feel as though God is nowhere to be found, because Job has done everything right, and yet bad things are still happening to him. The danger in reading Job as a book that tells us to just endure the pain and God will make us prosper, is that we are able to see instances in which that simply is not the case.  We see people like Martin Luther King Jr., and we expect the story to play out the same way. Once upon a time there was a man, and because of the color of his skin his was discriminated against. This man stood up to the injustice and led a peaceful movement that spread the message that no matter the color of your skin we are all children of God. We know that the next section of the story is supposed to be the happily ever after, but as we know King was shot and killed. In the Bible we have instances of great Christian leaders killed for their beliefs as well. All of this throws a wrench into this understanding of happily ever after.

            And yet, the story of Job is a story of joy and peace in the end for Job. It is a story of happily ever after. But let us look more closely at where this joy comes from. We look at the end of Job and we are of course first drawn to the fact that he is given riches, that he is given more livestock than he had ever had, that he has more beautiful and wonderful children, and that he lives on for quite some time. Yet at the same time we are quick to forget that Job had other children that he lost, are these children supposed to simply be a replacement for them? We forget that his wife and his friends had questioned him and abandoned him in his greatest moment of need; does all of this wealth help heal those emotional wounds?

And yet, Job does live happily ever after, so what is it that really brought peace, resolve, and joy to the life of Job? In our expectation of happily ever after, in our experience of fairy tale endings, we jump right to the end and forget to look at the beginning of this chapter. What is it that really resolves the conflict. When we look closely at the beginning of this chapter we see two things happen. First after being rebuked by God for acting as if he were God, Job humbles himself, confesses that it really isn’t about him, and puts his full trust in the Lord. The second thing that happens, is that Job once again acts selflessly, and asks God not to punish his friends, even though they had abandoned him and spoken falsely about God. It is only after these acts that we read about Job’s fortunes being restored and it seems as if it is through these acts that Job truly finds joy. Remember as we read through the book of Job most of what was troubling Job, most of his complaints, were not about the loss of his family or fortunes, not even the abandonment of friends and his wife, but Job’s biggest struggle was why was God doing this, and why was it happening to him. Finally in the end, Job realizes that God is greater than he could understand, that God is merciful and that God is just, and that even though Job may not have understood why these things were happening to him, he realized that God had never left him. And then Job realized that everything is not about him. The whole time Job was wallowing in his self-pity, and all of us have to admit it was for good reason, but in the end Job humbles himself, becomes selfless, and despite everything his friends said to him, asks for God to forgive them. The joy for Job seems to come from the fact that the burden was off of his shoulders. God’s mercy and justice was no longer something he had to struggle with trying to figure out, because Job put his full trust in God. Job’s joy seems to stem from the fact that life is no longer a struggle of trying to figure out God, the primary goal of life was no longer to “do the right things” so that God will bless you, but instead it became about a true relationship with God. A relationship that involves trust, and not a trust that God will bless you with riches, but a trust that God truly loves you and looks out for you. A trust that that though you may not understand what is going on in your life, God does. This is the joy that Job experiences. A relationship that is founded on a principle of I will trust you if you will bless me in the future is not a good relationship, but a relationship founded on the principle of I will trust you because of who you are, is a relationship that brings joy.  The true love story, fairy tale ending starts with that commitment of for better or for worse, and when we make that commitment to God not even death can do us part. When we make that commitment, when we put that trust in the Lord, no matter what happens in our lives, even through good or bad, we truly can live happily ever after.