BILLTESKA

Nathaniel West observed that there is nothing more pitiful than the truly monstrous. As you will remember, he killed himself after years of writing a column of advice called Miss Lonely Hearts. Maybe there were other reasons for his depression, but the contents of his book by that name is enough to give anyone suicidal thoughts. How can God allow such undeserved misery and horror? Today we hear God’s answer. Well, not an answer exactly, but the evidence that God is just as much against human suffering as we are.

Or rather, we hear two answers: God’s self-defense to Job and the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, two of the most memorable passages in all of scripture. God’s majestic address to Job is just about the literary pinnacle of the Hebrew Scriptures. Let’s hear it again, this time in the archaic language that was the literary pinnacle of English:

1] Then the LORD answered Job out of the whirlwind, and said,
[2] Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?
[3] Gird up now thy loins like a man; for I will demand of thee, and answer thou me.
[4] Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast under-standing.
[5] Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it?
[6] Whereupon are the foundations thereof fastened? or who laid the corner stone thereof;
[7] When the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
[8] Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it brake forth, as if it had issued out of the womb?
[9] When I made the cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddlingband for it,
[10] And brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors,
[11] And said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed?
[16] Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea? or hast thou walked in the search of the depth?
[17] Have the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors of the shadow of death?
[18] Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth? declare if thou knowest it all.

Beautiful. Majestic. But not really an answer, more of a rebuke: “Sit down, and shut up!”

Modern existentialists love Job so much that they can’t bear the thought of the restoration of his fortunes in the end. Must be a later addition. The purity of his predicament and his accusation of God has to be maintained, along with God’s Olympian answer. There is a new theory that Job was written as an answer to Daniel. That is, as an anti-messianist tract, advising people not to expect any help from God, any deliverance from things as they are. Just gird up now thy loins like a man and forget about any kind of supernatural comfort!

Well, this may be good advice for bourgeois skeptics, whose only discomfort is their angst. But I don’t think I would offer it to the pitiful monsters of Miss Lonely Hearts, or to the victims in Darfur, or to the starving in Ethiopia, or to the disappeared in our secret American torture prisons. I would point them to the Decapolis and the Messiah: to God Who is at war with our suffering and disfiguration, and everything that causes them, to God Who is so outraged about them that He suffers them Himself, in order to destroy them.

The man possessed by Legion is frightening – strong and violent and dangerous. But more than that, there is something so very pitiful about him: ripping off all his clothes and hurting himself with stones, not knowing what he is doing, living in the graveyard. The response of God is just as majestic as in Job’s case, but here it is the suffering that is rebuked and cast out. And there is no phrase in the bible more moving than the result: they saw him sitting there, clothed and in his right mind.

[The poor pigs get the worst of it. If we were writing this story, the demons might go somewhere else – into multinational corporations, or stock markets possibly, there to cause them to self-destruct like so many Enrons and Worldcoms. All we can say is that the keeping of swine, the unclean animals, is a detail meant to underscore the pagan, or at least the Hellenized, character of the country Jesus was visiting. The fact that there were so many pigs around indicates that Jesus wanted to help not only observant Jews, but also apos-tates and maybe even pagans.]

Well, there are lots of symmetries and reflections between Job and today’s Gospel. For one thing, both have storms and maritime references, and the psalm appointed seems to pick up that theme:

Then he spoke, and a stormy wind arose, *
which tossed high the waves of the sea.

They mounted up to the heavens and fell back to the depths; *
their hearts melted because of their peril.

They reeled and staggered like drunkards *
and were at their wits' end.

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.

He stilled the storm to a whisper *
and quieted the waves of the sea.

Then were they glad because of the calm, *
and he brought them to the harbor they were bound for.

So, there’s a reference to the disciples freaking out on the boat. But let’s notice that in the Psalm, the Lord started the storm to begin with, and that in Job the LORD speaks from out of the whirlwind. It is His medium, the platform from which He rebukes Job. In the Gospel story, however, He rebukes the wind, and then goes on to the vivid story of the man possessed by Legion. But all three of these stories start with rebukes issued to God. Job had protested his own misery; the disciples are frightened to death. Don’t you care if we die? And the demons command Jesus in the Name of God to leave them alone. We hear God’s answer to these three rebukes: the majestic Olympian one, the somewhat dismissive one on the Lake, and the Decapolitan one. All of them express God’s sovereignty, the fact that everything is subject to the Love of God.

God’s providence IS inscrutable to us. His seeing through is infinite. Our perspective is decidedly limited. As a result, we suffer. Like the demoniac, we are captives – captives of our finite perspective, regularly tormented by the fear that the Love of God is defective. We are disfigured, dwelling naked among the tombs and cutting ourselves with stones. Maybe if we could see from God’s vantage point we wouldn’t care, but we can’t and so we suffer. Like the distraught disciples, we are tempted to think that God doesn’t care if we perish. God’s answer in the Messiah is to come and live in our dimension and to suffer with us, demonstrating just enough sovereignty over the forces that oppress and frighten us as is necessary to give us hope. Of course God cares if we perish, God is not just asleep in the stern. He is in the storm. All the forces of chaos, natural and supernatural are subject to Him.

Why are we afraid? He asks us. It can only be because we don’t trust Him, don’t really trust that He cares about us. His rebuke is addressed not only to the wind and the waves, but to us in our crazy anxiety: Peace! Be still. Not so different from what He said to Job, really: Sit down and shut up! The difference is that in the Gospel He goes on to show us His deliverance. It comes not on our terms, and it comes with a cost. 2000 pigs are no small fortune. It will also cost Him His Life. But the reconciliation achieved by that Life is not only our vindication, the cancellation of our sin, it is the vindication of the Creator in the eyes of pitiful, aggrieved humanity: Job’s indignant grief dissolved in the joy of the former demoniac sitting there clothed, and in his right mind.

# posted by billteska : 9:18 PM