Sermon Feb 13, 2005
“Behemoth and Leviathan”
If
you read the e-mail announcement of this week’s sermon title you may have been
a little mystified by it; “Behemoth and Leviathan” are not exactly everyday
terms.
There
are, I fact, the names of two mythological beasts mentioned in God’s speech at
the end of the book of Job. How they
figure into this sermon will, I hope, become clearer as we go along.
The
Book of Job may or may not be familiar to you.
If it is, the story probably gives you the willies. It is, in fact, one of the earliest attempts
to come to terms with the problem of human suffering. The book reached its final form about five centuries before the
birth of Jesus, or about 2500 years ago.
You
might wonder what such an ancient story might have to say to us today. We certainly don’t want to automatically
grant it some sort of authority, simply because it’s old or that it ultimately
found its place among the Hebrew scriptures and thus into the Christian Bible.
And
while I don’t want to cite it as some sort of revealed truth, I do think that
ancient texts often contain insights into the nature of reality that can be
helpful. While we are right to avoid
accepting ancient myths as scientific statements, these people experienced life
in much the same way we do (in fact, their world was a far more brutal than ours
is) and sometimes they stumbled upon essential insights into life; insights
that can help us on our way.
Even
granting that, however, the Book of Job presents us with significant problems. First among these is the story that forms
the core of the book. God and Satan
make a bet. Satan claims that Job only honors
God only because God has blessed him.
Take away the your protection, says Satan, and Job will curse you. God takes the bet and allows Satan to terrorize
Job; first depriving him of his great wealth, then killing his children, and
ultimately afflicting him with oozing sores all over his body. But Job remains steadfast and refuses to
complain against God. He is ultimately rewarded
for his faithfulness by having his wealth restored (it is actually doubled) and
is blessed with new children to replace those who have died.
Most
of us have problems with this story for good reason. We are offended by the idea that God lets Job suffer simply to
win a bet. We have problems with the
idea that Job’s children die just so God can make a point. We even have problems with the idea that you
can replace a child whom you have lost with a new one and suddenly everything
is okay.
It doesn’t
help to explain that at this point in Hebrew thought, Satan isn’t the devil of
later Christian literature. Satan or Ha
Satan in the Hebrew, is an angelic being; part of God’s royal retinue. His job is to act very much like our public
prosecutors do today, to discover and expose evil. His accusation against Job is like a legal indictment; and Job’s
suffering is his trial.
The
truth is, the whole premise is offensive.
Should anyone have to suffer to prove they really love God? We rightfully reject the idea of God that
the story presents.
But we
need to understand that the story of Job represents a very ancient form of
piety. It reflects a time when God was
understood only as the power behind all events. The idea that there was anything particularly moral or just or good
about God had yet to develop. At this
point God was simply a very powerful being; and the story teaches that the correct
religious response is to accept whatever God does without complaint. It taught them to respond suffering by quietly
submitting to the will of this arbitrary deity who could do and did do whatever
he wanted. That kind of stoicism may
have worked fairly well at that rather brutal point in human history, but is
hardly adequate today.
But
the book doesn’t stop there with this simple story. In fact the book kept growing and expanding over centuries, as
new generations wrestled with the problem of suffering over and over again. We can pretty much trace the history of
their thought on this problem by looking at different parts of the book that
were added as they discovered what they felt were new solutions to this problem.
At
some point in their history, the ancient Hebrews decided that God was moral (or
just, as we might say). But then they had
a problem. How can God be just and in control of everything that
happens? Their answer was that
suffering was punishment for sin. That
answer worked to some degree. When
things go bad, it’s not that God is doing something bad; it’s an expression of his
justice, it’s punishment for your sins.
This
stage of Hebrew thought is represented by three of Job’s friends who supposedly
come to comfort him but instead spend thirty chapters trying to convince Job
that he must have sinned if he is suffering.
But these
chapters also show us the next stage in Israel’s journey toward understanding
the problem of suffering. This stage is
represented by Job response to his friends.
He rejects their accusations and insists that suffering is not
retribution for sin. He’s not sure why
he’s suffering; but he somehow knows their explanation is inadequate, that it
does not explain all the pain that humans are subject to.
The
fact that thirty chapters of the book are devoted to the argument between these
two positions tells us how contentious this issue was at the time. And the fact that Job offers no alternative
explanation for suffering, that he can only voice his sense that what his
friends claim can’t be the final answer; tells us that the Hebrews had not yet
arrived at anything near to a solution to the problem of suffering; but at
least some of them felt strongly that the prevailing wisdom of their time, the
wisdom that said that all suffering was punishment, just couldn’t be true.
Fortunately
there are another two stages in this quest for truth that are represented by
other parts of the book (actually there are more than two, but we don’t have
time for them all today). These are
represented by the two speeches God makes at the end of the discussion between
Job and his friends.
In
the first speech God talks about creation; about the sea and the sun, about
storms and rain, about the stars and the clouds. He then describes a series of animals and their particular
behaviors. He talks about things that
don’t seem to make sense; like the ostrich that lays its eggs in the open,
where any predator can eat them, and walks away, apparently not caring.
At
first glance it seems that all that God is doing is bragging about all the
things he can do and make. He seems to
be saying to Job, “Look at how great I am, how dare you complain.”
But
that really misses the point of this section.
For the Hebrew people; nature contained clues about the character of
God. It reflected God, in the same way
any work of art reflects its creator.
The point of the speech wasn’t the power of God to make all these
things, it was about the wisdom of God being beyond the understanding of
humanity. They saw the diversity, the
complexity, the vastness and even the apparently foolish aspects of creation as
pointers to an intelligence far beyond our own. From this they drew the conclusion that trying to understand why
life is the way it is; is an impossible task for our limited minds.
This
answer reflects an important aspect of Hebrew wisdom. The human mind has limits and the divine wisdom so far exceeds
our own that we cannot grasp it. This also
influences their idea of humility. There
are things we can’t know and we shouldn’t try to know. Psalm 131 expresses this well: “O Lord, my heart is not lifted up, my eyes
are not raised too high; I do not occupy myself with things too great and too
marvelous for me. But I have quieted my
soul.” They would say that the best we
can do is trust.
This
is contrary to our way of thinking. We
want to know, we insist of answers. But
they would say; “Look at the world.
Look at the universe. How could
you understand the intelligence that made all this. Please stop being so silly.”
This
understanding of divine wisdom as something beyond us may have something to offer. Maybe the intelligence that created this
universe is beyond us; maybe we aren’t capable of understanding why the
world is the way it is. Maybe instead
of racking our brains trying to understand everything, we need to take some
comfort from the beauty we see and the love we know and the goodness we experience,
and accept that somehow there is an answer for our pain. May be we need to trust the universe, even
though we will never fully understand it.
That
certainly seems to be a little better answer to the problem of evil than the
one’s that preceded it. But in God’s
next speech; Hebrew thought goes even one step further.
In
this speech God speaks of two mythological monsters; Behemoth and
Leviathan. In some ways the description
of these animals seem to be grossly exaggerated descriptions of a hippopotamus
and a crocodile, but they seem to represent something much greater.
The
accounts include references to the monsters’ uncontrollable strength, their
invincibility, and that fact they cannot be tamed. They speak of how no one can control these great beasts,
apparently not even God. But what does this have to do with nature of our world
or the problem of evil?
I
think these beasts refer to an element present in the world; to the idea that
there is an aspect of creation that not even God controls. The fact that the story says that God has
created these beasts, also seems to signal that this element, this uncontrolled
aspect of reality, is an expression of the divine will.
But
what could this uncontrolled element be?
I would suggest to you that it is freedom; not political freedom or even
merely free will for humanity. I would
suggest that it is the freedom of everything that exists to be itself, to
realize itself, to become itself.
Why
is this freedom an answer to the problem of suffering? Because there is a price attached to having
it. The truth is, if everything is free
to be itself, to fully realize itself;
these freedoms will ultimately come into conflict.
On a
very simple level; let’s take human freedom. Five people apply for a job. They are all free to do so; God doesn’t stop
other applicants from applying so you won’t have any competition. The personnel manager is also free to hire
whomever he or she desires. One person
gets the job and experiences the event as good. Four don’t and experience it as evil. Competing freedoms mean
that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
This
isn’t particularly comforting, but what are the alternatives. Should the world be organized solely around
you, so that you always win? What about
everyone else?
The
truth is, often when we complain that God lets bad things happen; we are really
complaining that God hasn’t organized the world around our desires; we are
complaining that our wants and our needs aren’t the center of creation, that we
don’t take precedence over the rest of creation.
Why
can’t the world be organized so everybody wins? But that would require that God controlled every action of every
human being. And that would make us no
more than puppets; no more than mere extensions of the divine. The truth is, to be truly alive, to be truly
real; we have to be free. Freedom is an
essential part of existing.
But
it isn’t just humans that get to be real.
Everything is real, which means that everything gets to be itself; to
seek to realize its potential, to become what it can become. Trillions of things all becoming, growing,
acting, pursuing their own nature. But
that means trillions of things clashing with other things, as each battles to
be itself.
The
sun gets to shine, even if it gives you a sunburn or parches a land till
nothing can grow. Rivers get to flow,
even if their waters sweep away an inexperienced swimmer. Lightening gets to flash, even if it hits your
favorite cow. E bola bacteria gets to
multiply even if it kills a helpless child.
Humans get to love or to kill. Cancer
cells get to grow.
And
the earth’s crush gets to move when the pressure beneath it grows too great; and
the sea it shakes gets to rise and sweep over the land.
The
alternative to this freedom is for nothing to be truly alive, for nothing to be
real. According to this last portion of
the Book of Job; suffering is the price we pay to exist; it is the cost of
life. And the fact that the divine chose
life with suffering over non-life suggests the depth of the Spirit’s commitment
to life, to the value the Creator places on life. Despite sickness, pain, and suffering; despite war and famine;
despite every evil known to humanity; it is still worth it to be alive.
And where is the divine goodness in
that? It’s not in making everything
work a certain way or according to a certain plan; it not in making life safe
or pain free; both alternatives would make us and creation less than real. The divine goodness is seen in its love of
life; in its commitment to life, in the richness of life. It is seen too in the vastness of a universe
that sings of a dedication to life, a celebration of life, an unimaginable endless
outpouring of life.
This
commitment to life has some ethical implications for us. It means that above all, we need to be
committed to life. And just as each
aspect of creation is rightfully intent upon realizing itself; we too need to
be committed to realizing ourselves; to become what we are intended to be, to
bring to fruition our potential. Beyond
that we need to be committed to allow others to fully realize themselves, and we
need to reject systems that crush the human soul and deny others full
expression.
At
the same time our self-realization cannot be like the self-realization of the E
bola bacteria. Our self-realization
must be more than the earth’s shaking or than plants reaching toward the sun or
animals pursing their prey; it must be more than mere dedication to ourselves,
although it must include that. It must be more because we alone, of all creation, are beings who can hear the
divine whisper; we alone, of all creation, are beings to whom the divine has
said; your fullest expression of self is to love.