The year, 1986. The date, May. The place, television sets across America. The show, Dallas. An American phenomenon in the 1980s. Dallas, an iconic larger than life soap opera set in a larger than life city. Dallas, the show that led to several spinoffs and reboots over the years, created two iconic television moments. The first, the surprise shooting of patriarch JR Ewing by an unknown assailant. The question, Who Shot JR, was on everyone’s lips and magazines and TV guides and even the news. The second iconic television moment? May of 1986. Season 9 of the show was ending, a season that began mourning the loss of a core character, Bobby Ewing, and the show dealt with that loss throughout the season. It is the season finale, and Bobby Ewing’s widow, Pam, has just gotten remarried and she wakes up to hear the shower running. The background music is telling you that, something is off, and Pam walks over to the shower, opens the door and her thought to be dead husband Bobby Ewing is standing there taking a shower like nothing ever happened! And he is standing there like nothing ever happened because, all of a sudden, nothing ever had. All of season 9, his death, all of the events, were, just like that, explained away as a dream had by Pam, Bobby Ewings wife. Now, some folks absolutely hate that ending. You’ll see it on a lot of top 5 or 10 worst television moments throughout history lists and even the shows creator didn’t like it. He said, it sold out the fans who had spend a year mourning the loss of Bobby. I tend to agree with the critics but, I can also appreciate its appeal. The appeal of making certain things never happen. The appeal of rewinding the clock, changing the past. I can even imagine similar thoughts going through Job’s head as he reflects on and talks about everything he experienced. But that’s not real. That Dallas ending that wipes away the past, its soap operas and tv and fiction. It is living in the past instead of working through present difficulties and moving towards the future. Job has gone through a lot in 42 chapters and today we arrive at the end of the road. And no, it is not a neat, clean “nothing ever happened its actually all ok,” soap opera ending, but it is so much better. It is an ending filled with restoration, long life, abundant future, family, and friends. It is an ending filled with the stuff of life itself, the presence, grace, and hope of God.
The past 41 chapters of Job have been rough and we have walked through difficult things together. I don’t know all of your lives and stories, but I do know that in this room are stories of loss, strength, struggle, despair, joy, difficulty, sorrow, pain, hope, and triumph. The book of Job is messy and challenging and in the past three weeks we have done so much.
We looked at how Christ used parables and we began to see Job, the book itself, as a long parable designed to challenge assumptions, dig into deep questions, and reveal God’s hope and wisdom.
We listened as Job’s “friends” were really horrible to him and we affirmed that sufferings and difficulties are not punishments or retributions from God. We lifted up that it is ok to shout and cry and name our pain and sorrow while also challenging ourselves to take time to stop, be still, and breathe.
Last week we finally heard God speak, after 35 chapters of silence we heard God speak and we wrestled with God’s words. We affirmed the truths that God created us, God cares for us, God loves us, and God is with us. Those truths helped us process the difficult reality God’s speech presented, the reality that there are limits to human understanding and somethings in life are mystery. And today Job faces that reality as well.
In this final chapter, Job repeats God’s own words back to himself, “Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Hear and I will speak; I will question you, and you declare to me,” and Job then reflects on those words. I picture Job here as the like the human embodiment of a giant sigh. Releasing all the frantic turmoil and sadness, releasing everything that his friends had dumped on him, releasing everything that he had dumped into himself, and in that release new understandings could take hold.
“Therefore, I have uttered what I did not understand, things to wonderful for me, which I did not know…I had heard you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you,” he says. This is a part of the poetry section of Job, which is basically all of Job except chapters 1,2, and the last dozen or so verse at the very end, and it is such beautiful poetry, “I had heard you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” The author puts Job’s lightbulb moment and dawning of understanding into sensory terms. With eyes wide open, Job recognizes the limits of human understanding, what we might call mystery, repents of his previous pride, arrogance, and assumption, and lets go. Lets go of his assumptions, lets go of what his friends have placed on him, he releases the emotional and spiritual burdens he has carried. Having released all 39 chapters of muck built up within his spirit, Job can finally move forward. And as God fills and surrounds Job, empowers and helps him move forward, we arrive at what I believe is the pinnacle, the culmination, the cathartic lightbulb moment of the whole story.
One of the greatest gifts of this book, this parable of Job, is that it helps us discuss and process a truth even Job had to learn: the truth that sometimes bad things happen, even to good people. And the best part of this gift, the best part, is that “sometimes bad things happen even to good people” doesn’t end with a period. Sometimes bad things happen, even to good people, good luck, so long. No, that is not how the story ends. The conclusion to the parable of Job ends with beauty and hope: sometimes bad things happen and God is with us and God can bring good even out of the most dire circumstances. Let me say that again, sometimes bad things happen and God is with us and God can bring good even out of the most dire circumstances. Not that God made those circumstances so that good thing could happen but that God sees our pain, knows what that pain feels like, and says, I am here. Says, this pain does not define you. Lean on me, help me work in your life and show you that there is hope, goodness, and light. In the first two chapters of Job, he lost just about everything except his wife and his own life. He lost his children, his livestock, his livelihood, his health. Then, he spent most of the book sitting on an ash heap, covered in sores he had scraped with broken pottery, listening to friends pontificate unhealthily and unhelpfully. God does not erase Job’s past or pretend it didn’t happen. Instead, God acknowledges Jobs pain, meets Job in the depth of his frantic spiraling depression, talks with him, and brings new life and livelihood out of the rubble and ashes. “And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job…the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before…The Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning…After this Job lived one hundred and forty years, and saw his children, and his children’s children, four generations. 17 And Job died, old and full of days.” Y’all God is not in the game of shallow hope and surface flash. Thanks be to God, that God is not a genie or a conjurer of cheap tricks or a soap opera producer. God is love, God is caring, God is Emmanuel, God with us.
Isaiah 43 – “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
2 When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you.
4 Because you are precious in my sight,
and honored, and I love you,”
Romans 8 – “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Matthew 28 – “And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.””
God does not promise bad things will never happen to us, but the good news is that we have a God who acknowledges our pain, is present with us, and can bring good even out of the most dire and difficult circumstances. The gospel of John, Christ speaks to his disciples, “in this word you will have troubles, but take heart for I have overcome the world.”
Sometimes bad things happen and the good news is that Job’s story doesn’t end there and our stories do not have to end there either. Embrace that good news this week. Today, anchor yourself in God’s love, God’s presence, and God’s grace. Feel God’s strength today. And tomorrow, and in the days following, let God’s hope guide you come what may. Amen.