The Rev’d Stephen C. Holton
Christ Church, New Haven, Conn.
The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost
June 23, 2024
In the name of God: Father, Son, & Holy Spirit. Amen.
About fifteen years ago a friend invited me to come to see a film with him. “It’s by the Coen brothers,” he said. “It’s a comedy,” he said. “It’s about religion. You’ll love it,” he said. My friend is a writer and has studied the intersection of film and theology, so I figured he knew what he was talking about. So in the middle of December, in the cold and snow, we made our way one afternoon to the theater to take in a matinee of Joel and Ethan Coen’s new film, A Serious Man. The film’s run time is 106 minutes.[1] As I said to my friend as we left the theater, that’s one hundred and six minutes that I will never get back. I was simultaneously furious that I’d spent an afternoon watching such a morbidly depressing film. And also delighted that it was so very good. And, on some level, wickedly funny—funny in the way that one might say, You have to laugh to keep from crying. It was sad, it was great, it was funny—a lot like life.
If you’ve not seen the film, permit a brief outline of the plot. The film’s main character, Larry, a physics professor at the local college, has been asked for a divorce by his wife Judith so that she can marry their friend Sy, with whom she’s been having an affair. Judith and Sy throw Larry and his brother Arthur out of the house and drain his bank account. His brother gets in trouble with the law and has a fatal car accident. His daughter is stealing from him. His son is failing his way through Hebrew School. A student is blackmailing him for a passing grade. And the rumor is that the faculty committee is recommending he be denied tenure.
He’s losing his wife, his family, his house, his livelihood. How could things go worse for Larry? And yet they do.
At the very end of the film, Larry receives a phone call from his doctor to come in to discuss the results of a chest x-ray; the implication is of course lung cancer. And, in the final frame, at Danny’s school, we see a tornado moving towards the foreground—a line of yellow school busses in its wake—as students and children run for shelter. The screen goes black.
The film asks all the time-honored questions of theodicy—Why is there evil in the world? What has Larry done to deserve all this misfortune? And, as though speaking for us, Larry himself asks this “why” question over and over again. His constant refrain is, “I haven’t done anything!”[2]
Of course, given today’s reading, you may already have made the connection. Larry is a type for Job in the book of the same name. You remember that story—“There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” (Job 1.1)
Job is a wealthy man, with livestock and property and a large family. And Job loses his family, his livestock, and his health—he is afflicted by sores and boils—his cattle die, and his children perish. Everything is taken from him.
His wife and friends offer suggestions about how Job should think about his misfortune—theories of evil and suffering. Explanations. But Job continually maintains his innocence. He cries out to God,
Teach me, and I will be silent;
make me understand how I have gone wrong…
Is there any wrong on my tongue?
Cannot my taste discern calamity? (Job 6.24, 30)
Hearing only his friends’ voices, he finally demands a hearing, an accounting before God. What have I done to deserve this? we can almost hear Job cry. And then God answers Job out of the whirlwind:
“Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?
Gird up your loins like a man,
I will question you, and you shall declare to me.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.” (Job 38.1-4)
How is that for a non-answer! Job just wants to know why this evil, why all this suffering, has been visited on him. He hasn’t done anything, as Larry, the character in A Serious Man, says.
Why is there suffering? Why is there evil in the world?
One way to read the voice from the whirlwind is that we aren’t to question why. All that happens is a part of God’s inscrutable plan for the universe. God has a plan for everything that happens to Job; Job just doesn’t know what it is yet.
I’ve heard that sort of logic far too often, and I have to tell you, I’m just not sure it holds water. I don’t think that’s how the continually emanating goodness of God’s creative will works. Just as an example, what if we look at Larry. Does God have some sort of purpose that requires that Judith, his wife, leaves him for their friend Sy? I don’t think so. That’s not to say that God can’t create something good out of a bad situation. But I don’t think God has split up Judith and Larry. And God doesn’t visit these plagues, these tragedies, on Job. Satan, the accuser, does that.
But there is another way to read the voice from the whirlwind. “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?” God asks Job. Job has been protesting his innocence—that he is a good person—that he hasn’t done anything to deserve these plagues. Job has demanded an accounting from God—why has this happened to me? And maybe this is Job’s mistake—maybe this is Job’s sin—thinking that he is good enough to avoid suffering—thinking that he above all people can avoid the reality of suffering and evil. That his goodness is sufficient to warrant some sort of alternative reality that belongs only to the kingdom of God.
Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?
Tell me, if you have understanding.
Who determined its measurements—surely you know!
For me, the story of Job—his demands for God’s accountability, and God’s sarcastic reply from the whirlwind—this turns the question from “Why does God allow suffering and evil?” to an allowance that suffering, that evil, does exist—so that the question becomes, “How do we deal with suffering and evil? And what is it that we have done to perpetuate evil in the world? What have others done? And what suffering is just a result of the brokenness of our own bodies—of our own lives?”
If as our Buddhist friends would remind us we take suffering as a given in life, and certainly in holy scripture we see plenty of suffering—even and especially in the life of Christ himself—if suffering is a given, then how do we as Christians respond to it? What are we to do?
Consider the situation of the apostles in the boat in our gospel lesson today. They are Jesus’s closest companions on earth. He has spent months, years, with them at his side. He’s been out all day teaching beside the Sea of Galilee and the crowds who have gathered are so large he’s had to get into a boat to keep from being crushed by their numbers. At the end of a long day, he wants to sail to another point on the lake, to get away from the crowds perhaps, and so his friends do what he asks. They sail across the lake—only 7 miles wide at its widest point—and they encounter a storm—and they are afraid.
Now I am sympathetic with the disciples’ fear. A friend of mine and I sailed just three years ago from New Haven to Black Rock, in Bridgeport, on a stormy day. The air was unpredictable and blustery, and the skies were overcast and the wind was chilly; we donned our crew jackets, dropped the sails, and motored forward, trying as best as we could to avoid the roll of the waves. My friend swears the seas were 6 or 8 feet. All I know is that, in an hour or two, we were safe in the harbor, tied to our mooring, on a launch to a dock with food and drinks and friends and level, steady ground. But the time on the rolling waters of the Sound was not pleasant. In fact, my friend was green. He was afraid, sick, terrified. Mathematically I knew the swells were not high enough to come close to swamping our vessel, but the feeling itself was enough to be overwhelming. Thankfully the next day was sunny and warm with fair winds and gentle seas, and I think he forgave me.
The disciples have it much worse than I did. Water is actually coming into the boat, over the gunwales. Jesus is asleep at the stern. And the crew, Jesus’s friends, are afraid that they are going to sink, and drown, and die. So I don’t blame them for crying out, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
We know the ending of the story: Jesus calms the waves, stills the winds, and they are amazed at how nature bends to Jesus’s very will.
They are not wrong to be afraid. But (as a vestry member in our bible study this week pointed out) Jesus trusts them. Jesus trusts them to weather the storm, to keep the ship seaworthy, to hold fast through the waves and the wind—to come out on the other side. “Why are you afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Jesus asks.
It sounds like a rebuke. But perhaps it’s an invitation. Perhaps it’s an invitation to that most Christian virtue, the virtue of Hope. Of faith. Of trust. Of belief that God is with us in the boat. That not even the worst storm can stop the kingdom of God. That we are held in the strong arms of Jesus.
Larry, the Coen brothers’ type for Job, is asking the wrong question: Why me? Job is asking the wrong thing: why did something bad happen to me, a good person? It’s not that Job is good enough to avoid suffering. It’s not that God allows suffering and evil—it’s that we perpetuate it. Evil is real. Murderous violence happens. Racism is real. Jesus, do you not care that we’re perishing? Not only does our Lord care. He is doing something about it. He is saving us. The kingdom of God is real, and it’s more of a reality than all the lies the devil tells us. It’s more true than even what we observe with our own eyes, more real than what we feel or believe. It involves us, and it is bigger than we ourselves are. It is God, God’s own will, God’s own creative, life-giving, loving power, that cannot be stopped. We are invited to have hope—to persevere. And we are invited to trust God—to trust in God’s kingdom—just as God is trusting us.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world? God asks Job.
Why are you afraid? Jesus asks his friends.
Evil is real. We see it in the world around us. We see it in the history of chattel slavery in this nation. We see it in the delay of justice, of freedom denied, in the Civil War when the Emancipation Proclamation ended slavery January 1 1863, and Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomatox in April 9 1865, but it wasn’t until June 19, 1865, that General Granger arrived in Galveston Texas to issue General Order #3 that enslaved persons in Galveston were actually freed. For two full months enslaved Black people in Galveston were technically free, but because the evil of slavery persisted they did not know it
Evil persists. Evil is real. But God’s freedom is greater. God’s love is greater. And God’s love wins, every time.
Jesus, do you not care that we are perishing? Jesus does care, and he’s in the boat with us. But he is unafraid because he knows the war has already been won. And he trusts us, his brothers and sisters, to persist in the face of evil, to rebuke it, to act in love and work for justice.
The disciples that saw Jesus’s crucifixion had no reason to believe anything other than that he had died. But Mary Magdalene saw the empty tomb—and told us about it. Jesus has given us the evidence that there is more than we can imagine. That the truth is full of hope, of possibility, and that all we need do is persevere, have hope, and trust.
I invite you today to come to this altar to be filled up again with the presence of Christ, to be fueled for the hope and perseverance and trust Jesus invites us into. Even as we lament at the foot of the cross may we not lose sight of the empty tomb. Come and draw near to the kingdom of God. And go out and tell of God’s trust in us. Go out and practice hope. Go out and look for the coming of the kingdom of God.
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[1] Film statistics from IMBD.com at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1019452/?ref_=ttpl_pl_tt, accessed 6/20/15
[2] Juliet Lapidos in “What’s going on?”, Slate, March 2, 2010. Online at http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/the_oscars/2010/03/whats_going_on.html (accessed 6/20/15)
NB—The treatment of Job in this text was first used in a sermon preached June 21, 2015, at Grace Church in New York.