Sit With Those Who Suffer | July 5, 2020
Good morning church and thank you for joining us in worship. We believe that we are made better by your presence with us in worship today, especially as we are practicing physical distancing.We are a community of believers-- a vibrant family built on God’s grace, who share a passion for the Word of God, living and serving in the image of Jesus the Christ. It is better when you are here.
Last week, we wrapped up our series on the life and legacy of Joseph. Joseph spent a lifetime of overcoming a myriad of challenges that could have taken out anyone. We saw, week after week, the glory of God shining through the redemption of Joseph, the protection of Joseph and the common refrain-- everything that Joseph touched, God blessed.
As a nation we have also spent the last several weeks examining our culture in the light of race and racial oppression. Since the death of George Floyd, I have been meditating on our scripture for today. It has been something I have not been able to shake. It has been with me when I go to sleep and when I get up. It's like a song, stuck in my head. Which is impressive because words like Bildad and Naamathite are not necessarily catchy.
This morning the thing I want stuck in your head is to sit with those who suffer and do not sleep.
So let us hear the word of the Lord from Job chapter 2, verses 11-13:
11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him. 12 When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. 13 They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
(Job 2:11-13, NRSV)
This is the word of God, for the people of God, thanks be to God.
Pray with me, church
Almighty God in your mercy, give us the strength we need to lie awake with our siblings, our brother (sic), our sisters, our neighbor. In your mercy, help us to not fall asleep. Amen.
I want to explain the setting of our passage in Job. Some of you may never read the bible growing up. Maybe you have read the bible your whole life and you just haven’t spent a large amount of time in the book of Job.
Job is set in a long, long, time ago in a land far, far, away. There aren’t any jedis, but the Leviathan in chapter 3 verse 8 does sound a bit like something we might find fighting Luke Skywalker. Job is introduced to us as a righteous man, blameless and filled with a deep awe and fear of God.
Job was also very rich, not only in livestock and income but also the greatest form of wealth-- his family. He had 10 kids and they were heavy on his heart. You see his kids liked to party and Job had a regular practice of holding a sacrifice for each of his children just in case they had fallen out of the law of God. Just in case they may have sinned, Job would practice the sacrifice ritual.
And I said that Job was wealthy in material goods-- that was a bit of an understatement. Now, it isn’t easy to convert sheep to dollars-- I asked Siri to do it for me and kind of just got a confused robot noise. But Job owned seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five hundred donkeys.
I think these numbers mean as much to you as they do to me, but let us just assume that Job has their version of “which Porsche should I drive today?” kind of money. Job had it all and he was incredibly devout. His whole life was marked by his devotion to what was asked of him by God. He held to the law and was obedient in his actions-- Job was righteous.
And then calamity hits.
Everything he has, his sons, his daughters, his sheep, his servants, his camels, his everything he owned is taken away through absolute and complete calamity. And then, it gets worse. His body rebels against him and he is covered in sores from his head to his feet. He has no place to hide from the calamities of life, not even in his own body.
And so Job did what so many of us have probably wanted to do when faced with calamity-- he shaved his head and sat in a pile of ash. What? You’ve never wanted to do that? Maybe it was the modern equivalent-- cut your bangs? Dyed your hair a radical shade? Shaved your beard or started to grow one? Have you made a yeast starter and baked five loaves of bread a day? Maybe you’re doing what I was doing for a long while in quarantine-- let’s see how I would look with long hair like in high school- update: it didn’t look great in high school and it looks worse now. I have been this close to getting my nose pierced. Luckily for all of us, I have a wife who keeps me grounded. To help get the chat working, post what you’ve done during quarantine that may have been a stress response.
You see, it is a human impulse to make the outside of our lives reflect the inside. What is bubbling beneath the surface needs to be shown.
And then the friends show up. These are our heroes this morning. The Hebrew says that his came to “NUUD,” with him and as with all biblical Hebrew, in my humble opinion, it is not easy to translate. It is something like this (cross arms and shake head slowly while rocking back and forth). It was a whole body thing. They were coming to be with a friend in a great time of need. This was active, ok? Seven days, seven nights-- torn robes and ash on the head. For the friends of Job, this was a whole body experience.They traveled to him, they stayed “in,” it for seven days and seven nights. Not passive, ok?
And what do they say when they show up? Not one word. They got their wailing and ash throwing done before they saw him. There was silence for seven days and nights. The silence spoke louder than any of the words they try to offer later in the book of Job.
You see they were there to sit with someone who was suffering and not to sleep.
Beloveds, we are in a season of calamity, are we not? It has become almost a trope for all of us that we are in a constant state of flux waiting with bated breath wondering what new sort of different catastrophe might come to us in the next news cycle. Now some of what is in the public psyche is not new-- our nation has long struggled with racial inequality and systemic racism. However, there have been continuous protests in a time of pandemic all throughout the nation since the video of George Floyd being killed was made widely known. A flu has put people into their homes for months causing parents to be both teachers, summer camp directors and security guards all at once while also working their full time job in a brand new mode and setting.
And those are the lucky amongst us. So many in our own country have lost their jobs and have no idea what may come next. Protests all over the nation are still trying to draw attention to suffering amongst my neighbors. Last week Pastor David talked about how the millennial generation is the most stressed generation, to which I would say, “....ehhh--uh-huh….”
And so we can see a brother in Job. Some of you may be thinking-- my suffering isn’t as great as Job. I pray that objectively that this may be true. However, subjectively, you may be suffering just as much as Job, if not more. And those feelings are valid.
And so it is with Job, he is feeling his feelings and his friends come to comfort him.
His friends have names that sound different to us--Eliphaz, Bildad-- but these names and locations are important. According to John Wesley’s commentary on the passage, these guys were from places that were well regarded for their knowledge. In a time when people were more intimately tied to people groups than we are now, this is an important detail.
These friends of Job had heard through the grapevine that Job was suffering and they did what every good friend would do-- they came to mourn with him. In my study for this week, I found a word that was new to me-- I want you to say “condole.” Maybe I am embarrassing myself in saying that I had to look this word up. Condole is the verb for giving one’s condolences. And so to condole with someone is to actively provide condolences with someone you love who is suffering.
It means to sit with those who suffer and not to sleep.
Job’s friends remind me of a time in my life where I saw what it means to condole in real time. When I was 20, my father passed away, at home after a long battle with heart disease. Hospice told us we had 48 hours and 48 hours later, he was gone. For years he had struggled with this disease and we knew exactly when he was going and still his last breaths were like every 4th of July firework going off at once inside a china shop. His passing was absolutely tectonic in the breaking it made within our hearts.
The church I grew up in had this amazing network of congregational care persons who were in charge of different people who were sick or dying. We made one call that my father was gone and the community got to work. I am from a small town and word tends to travel fast-- but this was lightning speed-- the pastor who came to condole with us beat the funeral home staff.
And this was Dr. Markley. Dr. Markley was the pastor of our church and he was a big deal in the community. I really thought that he would come with scripture and a tiny sermon… or maybe even a big sermon, who knew? I really thought that we were going to be taught and instructed on how to feel.
But do you know what he did? As we sat in a room all visibly shocked from what had just happened, Dr. Markley sat on the ground, in his suit, with his legs crossed. This was a guy with high esteem in the community and here he was, wrinkling his suit on our carpet. And the rest of us, we stood around. In silence. Until he very quietly said, “could you tell me a story about your father?”
And we did.
The stories fell out one after another and then the laughter started, and then the tears, and then the grasping at the sides, and then more tears.
Could you imagine what would have happened to us if we had to listen to Dr. Markley explain about how our mourning wasn’t really that bad? That in the grand scheme of things, we would all get over this one day and that everything happens for a reason? Instead, like a friend of Job, he sat and was silent, and made space for others to feel. He sat with us and for us.
He sat with those who were suffering and did not sleep.
The church is to be the arbiter of healing in this world. You see, that is because we are the carriers of the Holy Spirit in the world. We carry this Holy Spirit for the healing of the whole world. We are called to bring the Kingdom of God to earth as it is in heaven.
Sometimes we walk around saying, “I just don’t know how anyone could feel that way.” Find out! When you find someone suffering it is our job to sit and to listen. The work of healing through the Holy Spirit begins with this understanding. Not agreement-- understanding.
Go to those who are hurting and sit but do not fall asleep.
What I adore about the passage we read from Job is that it teaches us how to condole, at the beginning of a book that shows us, chapter after chapter how to condole incorrectly.
Because like is often the case, for the friends of Job, the trouble began when they started talking. Oh, Job’s friends became so wise after those seven days of silence. One of the commentaries I read this week said that their advice was often “undiscerning and tactless,” which as biblical commentaries go is a pretty sick burn. They sat with Job, but eventually they got bored with Job. They got tired of just sitting there. He didn’t get over it in a convenient time frame for them. They needed to get back to their lives that they left to sit with Job. There had been enough boo-hooing, hadn’t there been?
They got tired in the face of their friend’s suffering. They began to sleep to the suffering instead of sitting with the suffering.
Essentially the rest of the book is a play by play of good old fashioned arguments amongst friends. Maybe in our culture or in your family you feel that you’ve done enough listening and it's time for you to talk. What good does my listening do for anyone or anything? How am I going to make my spouse, my kid, my community any better just by listening? And sometimes sitting and listening takes a long time.
When we first got married, my wife was a teacher. She loved literature and so she decided to teach it teenagers. Believe it or not, sometimes she would come home frustrated. I would hear her frustrations and I did exactly what I thought was best-- I offered solution after solution. Anyone who has been in a relationship for longer than a week knows what happens next--”Michael I am perfectly capable of fixing things on my own, I just need you to listen.” And I am proud to report that my wife only had to repeat that exact sentence 5,000 more times until I got it. Men and women both, when we hear the people we love suffering, we want to find solutions for them.
But when we skip sitting and listening, we skip hearing the whole heart of the ones we love. I want to call the church back to her job as listener. Sitting in silence at the feet of those who are suffering and hearing their whole heart, their whole history, their whole story.
Let them talk. Listen deeply. Sit and do not fall asleep.
And church please understand me-- I am not saying that silent listening means that we check out of every discussion and dialogue in the public square-- far from it. I am not telling us to be silent in the face of oppression or in the face of the needs within the lives of loved ones-- far from it! What did the friends of Job do? They heard their friend was suffering and they went to him-- they sought him out-- they packed a lunch-- they got on the road-- they sat and they were silent. They listened and they did not fall asleep.
Maybe you thought you’ve missed something and I keep telling you to not fall asleep. May this reading from the Gospel of Matthew teach us even further. Hear these words--
36 Then Jesus went with them to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” 37 He took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and agitated. 38 Then he said to them, “I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and stay awake with me.” 39 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” 40 Then he came to the disciples and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, “So, could you not stay awake with me one hour? 41 Stay awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial;[e] the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
Matthew 26: 36-41 (NRSV)
I want us to remember this passage because I think it shows a good example of what I know I am sometimes guilty of when it comes to understanding suffering around me, and maybe you are struggling in the same way-- or I can just preach to myself for a moment.
Christ is nearing the end of his life in crucifixion. A painful way for the body to be broken and killed. Being fully God and fully man, he knew what was coming and so he went to Gethsemane to pray for strength. This is the passage that gets me right in the feelings, every single time.
Because the best friends of Jesus, instead of sitting with him in his suffering… they fall asleep.
And as I end my time this morning, church, this passage needs to teach us today. Christ in all of his humanity reached to his closest allies and asked them to stay up with him a little while. To witness his suffering. To take it in. To be like the friends of Job. They couldn’t fix a thing. The whole of the oppressive and occupying force of Rome was hurling down upon them and all of their attempts to fix it would fail. And yet they fall asleep.
To what suffering are you falling asleep? Whose suffering causes your eyes to droop?
What does Christ say to them as they fail asleep? Stay awake! The spirit is willing and the flesh is weak, chapter 26, verse 41b.
And so in our families, in our community, what suffering makes you doze off? What causes your eyes to droop. What causes you to be bored?
This is difficukt for all us fixers-- doers-- healers-- it is the work of the Holy Spirit in us and in our action that will change the world. Not one of us is as powerful as the Holy Spirit which is within all of us who follow Christ.
Healing comes from the Holy Spirit. Spoiler alert to the end of Job-- nothing gets better for Job until God shows up. Nothing got better for me in mourning my father until the Holy Spirit worked within to heal my broken heart. Racism will not be healed until the Holy Spirit works within our world and that means we must move, church! We carry the Spirit into this world! How will you carry the light of the spirit into the world?
You cannot carry the Holy Spirit when you are sleeping to the suffering around you.
What neighbor is sitting in an ash heap in torn robes, sobbing silently?
Where on the margins are you being called to sit in silence and not fall asleep?
What feelings need to be heard?
Where can you carry the Holy Spirit so that there may be healing?
Pray with me-
Almighty God, in the breaking of one loaf you remind us that though we are many, we are one in your son, Christ Jesus. Help us to listen carefully for the cries of our neighbors. Show us the moments in which we could sit quietly and listen and help us to never fall asleep to the suffering around us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.