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Job’s piety and life of bliss1A man in the land of Uz was named Job. That man was honest… a person of absolute integrity…he feared God and avoided evil.?2?He had seven sons and three daughters,?3?ANDDDD owned Seven. Thousand. Sheep. Three. Thousand. camels, Five. Hundred. pairs of oxen, Five. Hundred. female donkeys, and a vast number of servants, so that he was greater than all the people of the east.?4?Each of his sons hosted a feast in his own house on his birthday. (AND) They invited their three sisters to eat and drink with them.?5?When the days of the feast had been completed, Job would send word[a]?and purify his children.[b]?Getting up early in the morning, he prepared entirely burned offerings for each one of them, for Job thought, Perhaps my children have sinned and then cursed[c]?God in their hearts. Job did this regularly.Job’s motives questioned6?One day the divine beings[d]?came to present themselves before the?Lord, and the Adversary[e]?also came among them.?7The?Lord?said to the Adversary, “Where did you come from?”The Adversary answered the?Lord, (purposefully) “From wandering throughout the earth.”8?The?Lord?said to the Adversary, (concerned) “Have you thought about my servant Job; surely there is no one like him on earth, a man who is honest, who is of absolute integrity, who reveres God and avoids evil?”9?The Adversary answered the?Lord, (questioningly) “Does Job revere God for nothing??10?Haven’t you fenced him in—his house and all he has—and blessed the work of his hands so that his possessions extend throughout the earth??11?But stretch out your hand and strike all he has. He will certainly curse you to your face.”12?The?Lord?said to the Adversary, (annoyed) “Look, all he has is within your power; only don’t stretch out your hand against him.” (exasperated/over it) So the Adversary left the?Lord’s presence.I like to imagine a film adaptation of this prologue. I can see the editor splicing together scenes from a narrow to wide lens. Starting with a particular story, then zooming out to a bigger picture.If you’ve ever seen It’s A Wonderful Life, you know exactly what I’m talking about. The scene starts with prayers of thanksgiving for George Bailey’s life, as places from the town of Bedford Falls pass across the scene, covered in a night snow. Then, the camera pans out.The clusters of stars assumed to be God and angels are bombarded with these same prayers. A wide lens is used, letting us see who the narrators will be of George’s best and worst moments.The audience knows what is coming next for poor George.It’s as if the narrator of Job has done the same, zoomed out with a wide lens from Job’s particular context to a conversation in the divine cosmos.We start with a narrow lens, receiving a glimpse of Job’s progeny and wealth. For all of which he thanks God.Then, the camera pans out. A wide lens is used to allow the audience to see the adversary, who sneaks in to a meeting, questions Jobs piety, and proposes a test, to which God obliges.The relationship between God and adversary often complicates the questions of theodicy that the book of Job as a whole presents.However, often missed from that debate is that the Hebrew word for “adversary” isn’t another word for “devil” or “enemy”.It holds meaning of prosecuting attorney, serving as God’s advocate, probing human behavior according to God’s directives in search of truthfulness and faithfulness.One way to read this prologue, then, is that through the adversary, Job is given a voice, and begins to start his conversations with God.This completely changed the prologue of Job for me.Maybe the adversary isn’t the villain, but an anti-hero. A person we normally wouldn’t root for, who brings suffering, but in the search for truth and faithfulness to God.It is as if the adversary is silently watching behind the camera lens, as it slowly zooms in on Job’s suffering, knowing that their job is done:That they have pulled and prodded a sincere voice out of Job concerning his piety.Perhaps when God asks if the adversary has thought about Job, it is because God wants to enter into conversation with Job about his “perfect” life, not because God wants Job to suffer.Friends, it has taken me forever to realize this part of the story is not about harnessing empathy for what is to come for Job. This prologue charges us to be different than Job. We have to zoom out to see the entirety of God’s justice and love for us.When we zoom in on Job’s life, what do we see?Job has fences.Job has 7 sons, 3 daughters, 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 oxen, 500 donkeys, vast amounts of servants, hosted multiple dinner parties and offered multiple burnt offerings.Job has a lot, yes, but his ownership isn’t the only point.Because a fence serves two purposes.A fence can protect or hide things, Fences keep dogs in, intruders out.and a fence can show honor.Fences also dictate to those who see it, that you honor what is inside. That you keep the dishonorable things you don’t want to deal with outside.You deal with the things inside your fence, and you don’t even have to lay eyes on what’s beyond it.The adversary saw Job’s fences, saw that God had “fenced him in”, and knew that Job would be vulnerable without those fences.To us, that seems harsh.To God, that seemed just.When I did a summer internship in Baltimore two years ago, I learned a lot about fences and the vulnerability it takes to see them, let alone tear them down.My job took me to neighborhoods across Baltimore City and County. And the more I drove around Baltimore the more I noticed wacky street directions.Google maps would take me round about ways to get from place to place, often keeping me from driving through certain neighborhoods that I needed to get to. At first, I thought google was programmed with bias, to keep me out of “bad neighborhoods”. But the truth was that Baltimore is designed to do that on its own. There are one-way streets everywhere. Sidewalks that just abruptly end on streets heavily foot-trafficked. It was not my directions, but the very essence of the city that was flawed.It is important to note it’s not just Baltimore. In our Richmond context I’ve noticed the same thing.Melrose Avenue has a one way that keeps Chamberlayne traffic out.One time I got lost coming back from Church Hill and instead of taking Broad Street or 95 the whole way back, I headed north the best I could. I went through visibly underfunded neighborhoods and side roads that I had never laid eyes on, nor would I ever have to if I stayed where I was planned to drive.We put up fences without second thought. We keep our neighbors at bay with multiple hoops to jump through before they can even enter our neighborhood. And friends, the bad news is that our society is built around these fences.The prologue of Job’s story offers us a different opportunity than we often take.Job does get his fences taken away, ripped from him. He does experience trauma from the loss of his patriarchal and materialistic society.But he loses it all to a force that wants to be in conversation with him, and a force he chooses to be in conversation with.Another Baltimore neighborhood I worked for a couple of weeks was a “covenanting” neighborhood. This means that in the leases of houses, leasers have to agree to not sell outside of their race or economic bracket.This still exists today as a practice, indoctrinated in and never challenged since its beginnings in the 40’s.The ministry I helped this church with was an afterschool program they started.They were prompted by hearing a statistic that almost half of county school children weren’t properly being taught how to read, and that past a second-grade level, it becomes increasingly harder to teach this skill.The church had the school choose 15 children they saw potential or need for leadership. Then the church offered those students a place to develop leadership and literacy skills after school for the rest of their elementary and middle school careers.Most of the church members owned houses in this covenanting neighborhood, while the kids mostly lived in the apartment complexes around the perimeter of the neighborhood, separated from the covenanters by a fence.The week I was there, the church was bringing in police officers to talk to the children. The idea was that by creating personal relationships with the police officers, the children might trust them.I was so hesitant to support this plan.The day the police officers came, they walked in with their guns and tasers strapped to their belts, basically at eye level with the children sitting on the floor.I waited for the worst to happen, for the children to shut down or be traumatized.I am overjoyed to say that what happened defied my expectations.The children started conversations with the officers.They shared the loss their families or friends had suffered from police.They asked how the police would help next time.I was the most uncomfortable presence in the room, not them.These children had spent no time building fences.Their curiosity kept them from building fences. Kept them hoping and acting toward a future where people were less fenced in.When we realize Job is going to lose his fences, when we realize these children don’t have any, we blame God for his and their suffering…as if God created the fences in the first place.So, what’s the good news?The good news is that our justice is not God’s justice. The good news is that God can see the wide lens, while we are stuck in the narrow.The good news is that God knows we are a flawed creation, creating fences, often unknowingly, that God calls us to tear down, to be vulnerable.I am not claiming that Job’s suffering is somehow qualified nor that his lamenting unqualified when all of his loved ones die, and he is inflicted with illnesses.But, friends, let’s not miss that in the wider lens, the one that stretches the cosmos,God is asking for a conversation partner, asking for us to operate out of hope and not fear of loss,asking for us to identify and then do the hard work to tear down our fences even just plank by plankconversation by conversation,hope by hope. ................
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