Job:
Healing Grief through Praise, Presence and Protest
In
Walter Wangerin's allegorical novel The Book of the Dun Cow the lead
character is a rooster named Chauntecleer who rules the animals of the
barnyard, large and small alike, as benevolent dictator. Chauntecleer is a
curmudgeonly, cantankerous sort who only late in life found love in the form of
the Beautiful Pertelote, and through the Beautiful Pertelote was he given
children. In the middle of the book there is a scene in which Chauntecleer
mourns the loss of those children who were taken away by the evil that was
invading the barnyard. This is how Wangerin describes Chauntecleer's mourning.
"To anyone who might have seen him standing on the Coop that night, Chauntecleer would have seemed to be black iron...the Rooster himself was iron and immoveable...At dusk he had crowed the crow of grief. But there had been no satisfaction in it. He had done it more the Lord of the land than father of the children: abruptly, briefly, bitterly, formally...And all who lay awake listening were left more agonized than had the crow rung truly with Chauntecleer's deeper sadness. But then, when the crow of grief was done, the Rooster was not. And so he held his position for hours against the night, while the animals beneath him, though they did not sleep, honored him with stillness and silence.
"'You,
God,' Chauntecleer finally said; but his iron body did not move...’You, God,
promise--then break promises,' he said. 'You give. You warm me to your gift.
You cause love to go out of me to your gift--and then you kill me. You kill my
gift. I did not want this land. I would just as soon have traveled my way,
taken what came to me by chance and left the rest. I would just as soon have
gone a-mucking through this world of yours unnoticed, untouched
by--your--righteous--hand. Then I may have been empty, but not bereft; I didn't
know what blessing you had it in you to offer. Then I may have been alone, but
not lonely; I didn't know what love you could ordain. You, God! You took me out
of my life! You set me into this false place. You made me believe in you. You
gave me hope! 0 my God, you taught me to hope! And then you killed
me.'"
A
second, quite different, but no less dramatic response to the loss of a child
is offered by the Rev. Dr. William Sloane Coffin in an article he wrote
following his son's death. Writes Dr. Sloane-Coffin, "'As almost all of
you know, a week ago last Monday night, driving in a terrible storm, my son
Alexander--who to his friends was a real day-brightener, and to his family
'fair as a star when only one is shining in the sky'--my 24 year old Alexander,
who enjoyed beating his old man at every game and in every race, beat his
father to the grave.'
"That
was from a sermon I preached three years ago when, on a dark stormy night, my
son missed a turn in the road, drove his car into Boston Harbor, and drowned.
When parents die, as had my mother the month before, they take with them a
large portion of the past. But when children die, they take away the future as
well. That is what makes the valley of the shadow of death seem so incredibly
dark and unending. Alex's loss seemed to be more than I could bear. But once
unbearable grief had given way to bearable sorrow, I realized again that pain
in this world is as natural as breathing. So the proper prayer seemed to be not
to ask God to rid me of the pain, but rather to ask for grace to improve the
quality of the suffering.
"When
a person dies, there are many things that can be said; and there is at least
one thing that should never be said. The night Alex died I was sitting in the
living room of my sister's house outside of Boston, when the front door opened
and in came a nice looking middle-aged woman, carrying about eighteen quiches.
When she saw me she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly
over her shoulder, 'I just don't understand the will of God.' Instantly I was
up in hot pursuit, swarming all over her. 'I'll say you don't, lady!' I said.
(I knew the anger would do me good, and the instruction to her was long
overdue.) I continued, 'Do you think it was the will of God that your brother
never fixed that lousy windshield wiper of his, that he probably had had a
couple of 'frosties' too many? Do you think it is God's will that there are no
streetlights along that stretch of road, and no guard rail separating the road
and Boston Harbor?'... The one thing that should never be said when someone
dies in such circumstances is, 'It is the will of God.' Never do Christians
know enough to say that. My own consolation lies in knowing that it was not the
will of God that Alex died; that when the waves closed over the sinking car,
God's heart was the first of all hearts to break."
The
essence of the decision before us is captured in these two stories of
Wangerin's Chauntecleer and Sloane Coffin's own experience. The decision before
us is this: God? Or not God? Who is to blame? Whose fault is it that this evil
occurred? If God is to blame, then why does God make such evil happen?
If someone or something other than God is to blame--whether it be myself or
another or a natural disaster or "Fate"--then why does God allow such
evil to happen? "Why" is the fundamental question we humans ask when
confronted with the great Mysteries of Life, and the great Mystery of Death.
Why?
There
is a branch of theology and philosophy called Theodicy that is devoted to
answering the question of Why? as it relates to God and the great Mysteries.
The traditional Christian response to Why? is to seek at all costs to get God
off the hook, to protect God, because if we don't who will? The traditional
Christian theodicy says something like: God created us with free will because
unless we have free will we cannot love God, for love is only love if it is
freely given; love that is coerced is no love at all. Therefore, that we may
know love--God's and others--and give love--to God and to others--God created
us free, but with our freedom comes the possibility for us to choose to turn
away from God; our freedom allows the opportunity to introduce evil into the
world. So it is that the possibility of evil is the price of love.
More
can be said about the question of Why? with all its theodicies, but I want to
leave the question of Why? because a strange thing happens when we look at the
Bible. We, in all our desire to protect God, create all these justifications
that seek to answer the question that drives all of us in our time of sorrow.
But the Bible is strangely silent on this question. It seems that God feels no
need to protect himself. The Word that God gives us does not heed our agenda.
We want to know why evil exists, but the Bible answers a different
question: What? What are we to do to find God's healing? In the story of
Job and in the cross of Christ we are offered some clues: Healing is a process
of praise, presence and protest.
The
Book of Job is one of the most ancient books in all of world literature. It's
beginning and end are familiar to most of us. The opening chapters present a
scene in which Satan tests Job with God's permission, taking away his life
stock, his children and, finally, Job's health. The final chapters restore
seven-fold all these things to Job. The true poetry, however, and what makes
Job a great book of Scripture and literature, are the conversations in the
middle between Job, Job's friends, and, finally, God himself. In the Book of
Job we hear the first clues from God's Word as to whence our healing comes.
The
first clue from Job is that healing is a process. Modern psychologists have
talked about our healing from grief in various terms all of which imply that
healing is a long term process. Kubler-Ross talked about shock, denial, anger,
sadness and, finally, acceptance. Others simplify this to talk about shock,
disorientation and reorientation. The author of Job understood long before that
healing is a process. The middle chapters of Job present a series of
conversations between Job and his three friends. What is interesting to note is
that there are three cycles of conversation: Job talks to Eliphaz, Bildad and
Zophar one time, and again a second time, and again a third time. Each of these
conversations is only slightly different. The message we are to hear, however,
is clear: Job's reaction to his loss requires a process of covering the same
feelings over and over and over. Healing is a process.
The
second clue from Job is that healing is a process of praise. The clear message
of Job is that God is Sovereign over heaven and earth. For much of the book,
Job complains that his suffering is unjust; he asks God to defend himself. Yet,
there is a line between complaint and accusation that Job does not cross. With
a memorable phrase, Job says, "Though he slay me, yet will I praise
him." It may seem strange to talk about praising God during such times
because, obviously, our hearts do not feel like praising God; clearly Job did
not feel like praising God. Yet the constancy of praise is often a matter of
the mind not the heart. A colleague in San Antonio lost his two year old son in
an accident. I met Ron a year after his son's death. He told me one day that
Job's words--"Though he slay me, yet will I praise him"--kept him
moving along a path of healing. He said that his temptation was to drift away
into bad theology, into ideas that God was somehow punishing him or that it was
God's desire that his son drown, nonsense ideas that ministers know are not
true but which Ron found tempting. But Ron said that the one thing that kept
him from grabbing hold of the temptation to buy into bad theology was Job's
words. Praise was that which held him together. Healing is a process of praise.
The
third clue from Job is that healing is a process of presence. We all know that
in times of doubt or pain or anger or any deep emotion, that arguments fail to
convince. We know from our experience with one another that when we're in deep
pain what we do not need is someone telling us how to feel or how not to feel.
What we do not need is someone telling us how to think or that we shouldn't
think a certain way. What we need is someone with us. Someone beside us.
Someone for us. We know that when we need, it is not so much what others do or
say; their presence is enough. So it is with our God. Job's healing encounter
comes through an experience of the Holy One, a vision of the majesty of the
Majestic One. The presence of God with him turned the ash heap upon which Job
sat into a sanctuary. The presence of God with him turned his complaint into a
confession of trust. Healing is a process of praise and presence.
The
fourth clue comes not from Job but from the cross of Jesus Christ. The fourth
clue is that healing is a process of protest. It is good that the story of Job
is not the final Word in Scripture on the mystery of human suffering, which
includes death, because Job does not tell the whole story. If all we had was
Job, then we might be led to believe that God's final response to human
suffering is: "I am the Lord. Who are you that you bring a complaint
against me?" While the sentiment behind these words is true, I am glad the
revelation of God in the New Testament goes beyond them. In the cross of Jesus
Christ, we see God's fullest and final word on human suffering. The cross is
God's protest over all suffering, all misery and all death. The cross is God's
Word to all heaven and earth that says, "Death is not my will! Death will
not sting its sting upon my children! Death will not have the victory!"
When the waves closed over the sinking car of Alex Sloane Coffin, God's heart
was the first of all hearts to break, and God remembered the cross and said to
himself, "This is why I sent my beloved Son to Calvary." To
understand the cross is to know that God's fullest and final will is not
suffering and death but our wholeness and life. Healing is a process of praise,
presence and protest.
So,
who is correct? Chauntecleer with his angry accusation? Or Sloane Coffin with
his good theology and bearable sorrow? Perhaps they both are. Chauntecleer's
angry accusation is so natural, so inevitable, so human. There is a rightness
to his words. Sloane Coffin's bearable sorrow is just the opposite: so
unnatural, not at all inevitable, so divine. There's more than a rightness to
his words: there is grace. Chauntecleer is right! But Sloane Coffin is more
right, for Sloane Coffin knows the experience of the grace of Jesus Christ who
took our death within him that he might impart his resurrection within us.
"Where, 0 Death, is thy victory? Where, 0 Death, is thy sting? The sting of death is sin...But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!"