© 2024 Evan D. Garner
Audio of this sermon is available here. Video can be seen here.
Sometimes stories don’t have the endings we want, but that doesn’t mean we don’t get the ones we need.
On July 8, 2010, LeBron James used a 75-minute prime-time special to announce that he was “going to take [his] talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.” Although 13 million people tuned in to watch the announcement, relatively few left with any sense of satisfaction. Fans in Cleveland, where LeBron grew up and spent his first seven seasons in the NBA, felt betrayed. In New York, where Knicks’ fans believed they would win the LeBron sweepstakes, the thought of another decade of mediocracy led to outrage. Generally, except for those who lived in south Florida, “The Decision” was widely panned as a commercialized spectacle, which celebrated and promoted the entitlement of athletes.
Fourteen years later, after two championships in Miami, another back in Cleveland, and one in Los Angeles, a secret tape that was made to influence LeBron’s big decision has come to light. Rumors had long circulated that the New York Knicks produced a celebrity-filled video as part of their pitch to bring James to the Big Apple, but no one could verify it. The video had never been shown to the public until sportswriter Pablo Torre obtained a copy and released it.
In the opening scene of the promotional video, James Gandolfini and Edie Falco reprise their roles from the HBO series The Sopranos as if they were living in New York under witness protection two years after the television series ended. Even if you never watched The Sopranos, you probably remember that the final scene of the final episode of the series cut to black, leaving the audience to guess what happened. It was highly controversial at the time. After six seasons, viewers wanted to know how it all ended, but the producers of the show wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. It came to be seen as one of the greatest television endings of all time, but, back then, not everyone was happy with how things worked out, but the Knicks didn’t make things any better
In much the same way, though for the opposite reason, it is hard to read the Book of Job and get any satisfaction from the way the story ends. After suffering the loss of his fortune, the agony of an illness, the death of his children, the desertion of his spouse, and the abandonment of society—and all for reasons Job cannot comprehend—God shows up and makes everything right by giving him twice as much money, ten new children, and totally renewed relationships with all the family and friends who had turned their backs on him. The only thing worse is seeing Tony and Carmela in their tiny New York City apartment two years after leaving the gangster life. To a post-modern reader, the so-called happy ending of Job cheapens the epic tale and effectively nullifies its theological message. Or does it?
I’m not the only one who hates the way the story ends. In 1958, American playwright and poet, Archibald MacLeish, published J.B., a modern retelling of the Book of Job, with a very different ending. In the final scene of the play, Job’s wife, who earlier in the play encouraged her husband to commit suicide as an act of religious defiance, comes back to him. But, instead of accepting the simplistic restoration of their fortunes described in the biblical story, the Pulitzer-prize winning play depicts the couple clinging only to the near-extinct ember of love between them. “Blow on the coal of the heart,” Sarah says to J.B.. “The candles in the church are out. The lights have gone out in the sky. Blow on the coal of the heart, and we’ll see by and by…”
Instead of leaving the audience to wrestle with their questions about the nature of a God who would allow such unjustified suffering, the play brings those questions right onto the stage. In one sense, the result is a far more satisfying end to the story—one that acknowledges explicitly, with its unrefined conclusion, the irreconcilable theological problems presented by the Book of Job. But, in another way, the play misses the point entirely. Although it acknowledges how hard it is for us to experience inexplicable suffering, in the place of our only true hope, it offers an even cheaper substitute—the thought that the best we can do is endure life’s hardships with the companionship of a human partner, replacing the inscrutable God of the whirlwind with an idol made in our own image.
Surely the story of Job is more valuable than a cheap fairy tale. Surely our ancient spiritual ancestors wanted a better ending just as much as we do. Surely they recognized the inadequacy of a God who would throw money and new children at Job as if that were good enough. Maybe we should do them the favor of saving the book by cutting out the last eight verses. If the story ended with Job’s repentance—his return to God—and the rebuke of his friends for suggesting that bad things only happen to bad people, maybe we’d be left with a story we’d like—one that resists the urge to overexplain and instead just cuts to black. But isn’t that the point in the first place—that our preference for a conclusion that we would have written cannot replace the ending that God has given us without sacrificing our hope in God for a misplaced our hope in ourselves?
Maybe the ending of the Book of Job is a hook designed to catch us, the readers, in our own need for certainty, as sharp and subtle as the fishhook God uses to catch Leviathan. There’s a reason Job never attempts to answer the unanswerable questions about the nature of suffering—because the greatest danger we face is not the suffering itself but our desire to explain it in satisfactory ways.
Job’s friends take turns explaining to him that a good and just God would never permit such bad things to happen to a righteous and upstanding person. Repent, they tell him, and everything will get better. But we know that’s not how God works. Job demands an audience with God, asserting that his lifetime of unequivocal righteousness has merited a hearing with the Almighty. But we know that even the holiest among us cannot plumb the fathomless depths of God’s mind. Elihu, the young prophet, rebukes Job’s friends for their shallow theology, and he also rebukes Job for failing to subscribe to the prophetic tradition, which teaches that God hears the cries of the oppressed as long as they humble themselves. But we know that all too often the desperate prayers of truly humble people do not receive the answers we think are right.
Whenever we fall into the temptation to seek our own perfect ending and suggest that we know why another person is suffering, we commit a grave sin. Whenever we decide that our plans for how and when something will work out are better than God’s, we commit a grave sin. The Book of Job is designed to teach us that it is dangerous, abusive, and disastrous when people, in the name of God, presume to speak with certainty on matters they cannot possibly understand. And the ending of the story is wholly unsatisfying in order to remind us that the temptation to speak for God is greatest among those who claim to know God the best.
As Sara preached last week, we believe in a God who abides with us in the midst of our suffering, even and especially when we cannot understand how. In the face of our lack of understanding, we may be tempted to exchange our God for one who makes sense to us or for no God at all. But, despite God’s unwillingness to conform to our expectations, God is not wholly hidden from us. The task of our faith is not the fruitless endeavor of pursuing an unknowable God but the unending journey of seeking the presence of the one who has revealed Godself to us in love. And that love does not condemn our suffering or discount it, but it redeems it as something holy and acceptable to God.
God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to the end that all who believe in him should not perish but have everlasting life. The way that leads to life everlasting does not avoid suffering but goes right through it. In ways that surpass our understanding, God shows us that our true hope is found in Jesus, the one who redeems our suffering by becoming our suffering. That’s an ending to the story that we could not have written on our own. That’s the good news of our faith—that our ending is neither what we expect nor what we deserve, and thanks be to God for that.