Satan?  Are we really going to hear about that old myth, that nonsense?  Beloved, whether you believe there is such a being, such an enemy as Satan or not, Scripture speaks of this being, this accuser.  At the start of this long contemplation on human suffering in God’s universe, Satan is there, “roaming around the earth” (1:7).  That sounds sort of random, sort of aimless, but what Satan is doing is not purposeless.  He is looking, looking for opportunities.  You can say Satan, you can say sin, you can say temptation, you can say human weakness—whatever you call it, you know, you feel, it looks for opportunities, opportunities to exploit us, to cause us to stumble.  Whoever here today who has never sinned, never done or said anything that God could even remotely frown upon, well, you can go home, now.

But even you, if there is such a person here today, even you are not exempt from suffering, pain, and sorrow, in this life, in this universe, God’s universe.

There is one school of thought  that seems to believe that faithful living in this life will be rewarded in this life, and the reward will be the sort of thing anyone can recognize as a reward: wealth, health, friends, popularity, food, prosperity.  By any measure, Job is a prosperous man.  He enjoys an abundance of all the good things one can faithfully have and enjoy on this earth.  God describes Job as “faithful and good” (1:8).  From the vantage point of this life, we could believe either that Job is wealthy and happy and prosperous because he is faithful and good, or we could conclude that Job is faithful and good because he is wealthy and happy and prosperous.  I hope you can tell there is a difference.  Is wealth the sign of blessing, of God’s favor, or is blessing, God’s favor, the sign of wealth?  Is wealth what we have or who we have?

Satan tells God it’s easy to understand why Job is so “faithful and good”: it’s to his material advantage to worship God!  “Would Job worship you if he got nothing out of it? [. . . .] take away everything he has—he will curse you to your face!” (1:9, 11).  Do we worship God in order to obtain things from Him?  Like a transaction?  We worship, and so we get things?  We put our quarter into the gumball machine, and we get two instead of one?  A miracle!  Is that what we’ve learned from God, learned about God?  Is this the sort of God we have?  Jesus reminds us: “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Mt 6:8).

The deeper, earthly situation is this, though: when we don’t seem to be getting what we want from God, we feel disinclined to worship Him.  Why should I worship a God who doesn’t protect me from hurt or sorrow or grief, or adversity? Why should I worship a God who allows me to suffer?  I’ve prayed and prayed about—about what?—you fill in that aching blank—and God hasn’t answered my prayer, even after all this time!  Hasn’t answered, or hasn’t given you the answer you want to hear?  Isn’t there a difference?

But we don’t understand, any more than Job understood.  He is hurt, he is suffering, he does not understand.  He does not lose faith.  He still turns his life toward God, even when it feels like—looks like!—his life has fallen to ruin all around him.  God didn’t protect Job’s wealth.  God didn’t keep Job’s children from harm.  What good is a God who can’t at least do that, for me?  Yet God is still good, in Job’s eyes.

And this is very pleasing to God, who says as much to Satan.  Satan, however, has a very clever comeback: “A man will give up everything in order to stay alive” (2:4).  Put differently, Satan is saying Job values his life above all else.  All else.  While there is life, there is hope, as the ancient Roman philosopher and politician Cicero said.  A politician would know.  Only, we also know, I hope we know, that Jesus had something to say on this subject, also: “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it” (Mt 16:25).  But we’re not quite sure what he means.

It was my grandfather who said, very wisely, that our health is our wealth.  But what if God doesn’t spare your life, your health?  Many of us have suffered and endured reversals in this life.  I don’t know the half of all the stories you could tell.  Yet here we are.  We have overcome, by the grace of God.  And what if God doesn’t spare your life?  Those of you who have had cancer, and who endured those darkest, loneliest hours of not knowing if you would live, those of you who have sensed the chilly, hair-raising nearness of death, you might have some idea what Job is going through.  What good is a God who doesn’t keep us from getting disease, or suffering grievous injury, catastrophic injury?  What good is a God who allows someone, especially someone we love, especially you yourself, to become paralyzed, or to lose a limb, or to become blind?  Helen Keller became blind and deaf as an infant.  What if she had also lost the use of her limbs?  Of what possible use is God if such things happen, are allowed to happen?  What good is God, what use, of what value or benefit, if He doesn’t at least preserve my life?  We might also ask, if we were that blind, deaf, paralyzed person: what use is my life?  And most of us probably could not give an answer.  We would tremble, rightly.  Thank God for euthanasia!

What do you suppose Jesus might answer?  He came across many blind people, deaf people, paralyzed people.  He healed many of them.  Do you think he healed every person he came across: made all of them physically whole, restored in body?  Is this what he came to do?

Don’t get me wrong, he came to bless and to heal, certainly!  And the physical blessings and healings were part of and pointers to a more profound change, a more profound blessing, a far deeper, fuller, eternal healing.  Jesus came to endure, to suffer—he says so (Mk 8:31)—to be rejected, convicted, sentenced to death, to die, painfully, publicly, to be buried, like all the dead.  And then to rise.  Jesus came to rise.  The rising did not come first.  As it happened, Jesus first came descending.  There is no ascending without descending.  Life will do that for us, won’t it?  Foolishly, we sometimes help life along: we cause ourselves to plummet, but even if we were wiser than anyone we knew and did all that we could to protect and insulate ourselves, life comes to us in full.  Sometimes it knocks, somewhat politely, and other times it just crashes through the door.

As Americans, we may place a lot of stock in self-reliance, doing for ourselves; I don’t criticize that.  I only suggest it’s inadequate, incomplete.  Tests, trials, will come; we know they do.  They have and they will.  Not all of them come directly from God, but all of them become occasions for growth, or atrophy, of our spirits.  All of them become occasions for us to turn toward God, or away.  Are we prepared to place everything in God’s hands: all our trust, all our faith, all our hope, all our love, all our life?

When I was serving for a summer as a chaplain at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, there in Houston, I made calls on newly-admitted patients.  One morning I came to a room: it was completely dark in the room; that was unusual: all the rooms I had visited had at least one window.  Either this room had no window, or someone had made sure that everything that could be used was being used to keep the light out.  I identified myself as a chaplain who had come to see her.  The woman quickly called out in the darkness, “No!  No chaplains!”  We were not to go where it was made plain that we were not wanted, so I said a prayer and noted her response in her chart.  The darkness in that room, beloved, wasn’t a matter of miniblinds or curtains.  She was suffering, and the last thing she wanted was any reminder of God.  I can only guess that she had no use for God, even there.

We really don’t need very much, do we?  What do we truly, fundamentally, inescapably need?  Food.  Water.  Shelter.  Clothing, maybe.  Health.  Access to medical care?  Family?  Friends?  Work?  Income?  No.  We don’t finally, truly, fundamentally, inescapably need any of those—not that I’m frowning upon any of them.  What I think we will discover, if we read all the way through Job, carefully, slowly, thoughtfully, and prayerfully, is that what we finally, truly, fundamentally, inescapably need, is not a what at all but a who.  We need God.  God is our most basic need.  Job affirms that, even in his sorrow, unhappiness, and confusion.

Where can that need be met?  Beloved, here.  Here, we can have a living encounter with the living God.  Here, from this table, in the meeting of Holy Spirit and faith, in this bread and this juice, this body and this blood, this atoning sacrifice, this food for eternal life, this Savior.  Here we, you, can encounter the living God and have a taste of the satisfaction of our first and greatest need.  In what humble, ordinary form!  Christ comes to meet that need.  Christ is here to meet that need.  To meet that need for us, he endured all that we must endure, and much he endured that we cannot begin to imagine, to meet that need for us.  That deepest need for God.  Here we confess our need.  Here we celebrate our need with joy, hope, and love.

Now to the One who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we can ask or imagine, to God be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever.