This was one those weeks when the chosen lectionary readings felt nightmarish. How can I as a minister bring to you a caring pastorally sound message from the readings we have this morning? If and I do mean if we take them at face value.

Allow me to ‘recap’: we have God striking a deal with Satan thus allowing Satan to do as he pleases with Job short of killing him just so God’s point about Job’s faithfulness is proven, we have a Psalm in which the psalmist is indignant and protesting his innocence because there has been a disruption in his ordered life; to some very serious words in Mark's Gospel on the subject of marriage and divorce. These words that Jesus has to say in Mark 10 are still uttered today in the debate about divorce. And then from the epistles or letters we have a theologically rich text from Hebrews which is focused on Jesus as Son of God.

Within our faith tradition, but not only this faith tradition, we, as Christians, are encouraged to look at the teachings from scripture with a critical eye. We are invited to question the texts placed before us and to wrestle with their meanings. Therefore it is my intention to share with you some thoughts that I have regarding the Book of Job and our reading from the Gospel of Mark.

We know from the text in the Gospel that once again the Pharisees were testing Jesus. The debate centered on the interpretation of Deuteronomy 24. It was the law of Christ's people that a man could write a certificate of divorce if he found "something objectionable" in her, he would provide her with a legal document indicating that she was free to marry someone else. Divorce for the woman, however, was practically impossible because of the Jewish Law at the time.

Jesus quotes from Genesis stating that from the beginning of creation ‘God made them male and female. For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let now one separate.’

Within the context of the day women were thought of as chattel, to be owned. Jesus, however, looked on them not as chattels owned by their husbands, but as human beings made also in the image of God. This ran counter to the customs of His time, against the prevalence of the idea of male domination which runs through Hebrew thought and practice, and is still prevalent in the Middle East and in other parts of the world, today. Jesus gave the world a new conception of women as persons equal with men in the sight of God. Jesus freely accepted them as disciples and he championed women against unjust and cruel laws which made them victims of their husband's whims. And we must never forget that under the Mosaic code the penalty for adultery was not divorce, but death!

The Pharisees wanted to lure Jesus...and trap Him. They knew that whichever side He took, he was bound to alienate the folks on the other side. The question may have been designed to draw Jesus into conflict over the divorced King Herod. The question concerns the legality of divorce not the grounds for divorce. What did Moses command you? Jesus asks the Pharisees. Deuteronomy 24: 1-4 takes the institution of divorce for granted; it concerns only the procedure to be followed when the husband has decided to divorce his wife and the prohibition of remarriage after her second marriage has ended.

Jesus shifted the argument away from divorce and toward marriage. The Pharisees were taking divorce seriously, but Jesus asks them instead to take marriage seriously. Jesus wants them to focus instead on God's original intent in the marriage relationship.

Jesus’ teaching is a restoration of God’s plan for creation. But He recognized the necessity for divorce because of what he called the "hardness" of people's hearts. When we speak of divorce we must recognize that there are people who simply must divorce. I do not believe that Jesus would insist that people stay together in a situation of pain and suffering no matter what. We must never forget that Jesus demonstrated over and over again immense sympathy for anyone who was suffering. When He dealt with people, it was never on the basis of Law, rather from a place of Love. He ate and drank with those whom society called sinners, Jesus saved an adulteress from being stoned; He even forgave the soldiers who crucified Him. And when He met the infamous woman at the well, a woman who had had five husbands and who was currently living with a man not her husband, He did not treat her with contempt. There are marriages where ending in divorce is the right path to take.

Jesus knew that people suffer in divorce. Men, women and children suffer in divorce. In a divorce there is grief over the loss of a relationship and children are very good at taking on all of the blame. After a passage about marriage, one about children seems very appropriate, however, this text is really about the kingdom of God and what kind of people can expect to be part of it.

Job was just such a person. The book of Job is the story of one man’s suffering, and through his story an exploration of human suffering and the inadequacies of theological views on why bad things happen to good people. This book questions the traditional view of life that finds a connection between following God’s ways and being rewarded. Job is held up as an example for the innocent and the good who suffer undeservedly.

We might consider the book to be a work of fiction, or as a kind of parable. It raises questions of innocent suffering and in this case it portrays Job’s problems as the outcome of a heavenly wager between God and ha-satan, as it is written in Hebrew, or when translated it is the satan or the accuser (much like a prosecuting attorney in court.) It contains wonderful poetry, marvelous rhetorical questions to Job and is unique in the way the question about suffering is addressed within the book. We are given information about Job, his character, family and social circumstances and we are taken into the heavenly realm for the dialogue between God and Ha–Satan or the Accuser.

The image of a God who has to play games with Job and his family as a means of proving that Job will remain faithful even without any protection from God, doesn't sit easily in today’s climate, however, this picture does reflect something of the context of the time of the world, its people and their understanding of God.

We are to wrestle with the wider theological question of why bad things happen to good people. In the case of Job it is because God decided to allow the Satan to test Job's faithfulness. This sort of competitive rivalry among those in the heavenly realm is part of many religions and may not have caused any problems to the listeners of the time. The narrator wants us to be very clear that in the case of his hero, Job doesn't warrant at any level, anything that befalls him. His personal story is the centre of the debate which is described to us in the following chapters.

We become aware that the orthodox theology of the time is very firm about the point that when a person is suffering it is because they must have done something wrong. Sin brings outward punishment.

If we move the theological question away from Job, we find it is still one that is part of our world today. “Why did God let this happen? Am I being punished? These are questions which have been asked of me during pastoral visits.

Why do some people seem to suffer so many more tragedies than others? There are no answers to some of these questions.

Carol Newsom, a contributor to the Women’s Bible Commentary, suggests that people have a subconscious contract with God in which God protects us from tragedy simply because we belong to God.

The most profound theological statement is present in Job's reply to his wife: "Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?"

This has been a week of destruction from flooding in the Philippines to an earthquake in Indonesia and a tsunami in Samoa. The stories of devastation have touched each of us and especially the worried loved ones here in Canada. Some may ask “why God?” Some may feel they are being punished by God. Others understand that natural disasters happen and so then the question becomes where is God in the midst of the loss, the suffering. The answer is that God is there, always, with each person and in the capacity of those who have mounted rescue efforts, the doctors, nurses, the family and friends in Canada and around the world who have mounted aid relief, God is there.

Back in the nineteenth century, the poet and abolitionist of the slave trade, John Greenleaf Whittier (1807 – 1892), in a poem called "The Eternal Goodness," wrote of the impossibility of humans understanding completely the ways of God. I share with you an excerpt from it:

Who fathoms the Eternal Thought?

Who talks of scheme and plan?

The Lord is God! He needeth not the poor device of man.

Yet, in the maddening maze of things,

And tossed by storm and flood,

To one fixed trust my spirit clings;

I know that God is good!

I long for household voices gone,

For vanished smiles I long,

But God hath led my dear ones on,

And He can do no wrong.

I know not what the future hath

Of marvel or surprise,

Assured alone that life and death

His mercy underlies.

And so beside the Silent Sea

I wait with muffled oar;

No harm from Him can come to me

On ocean or on shore.

I know not where His islands lift

Their fronded palms in air;

I only know I cannot drift

Beyond His love and care.

Whittier was convinced that greater than the reality of the negative is the goodness and mercy of God that underlies our lives. So when we ask where God is in all this suffering, the answer invariably should be God is where God has always been right there at our sides. Amen.