delivered on 18 October 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
'Behemoth and Leviathan' by William Blake (1757-1827)
We rarely ask about the meaning of life when everything is going well. If we have money enough to have a good life, good health and strong relationships – why would you question? Indeed what you believe must be true, or what you have drifted into – that is the cause of your personal happiness. However, the real measure of a person, or a community or even a nation, comes when they face difficulties and complexities. Does what we once believed still sustain us as we cope with complexity, difficulty, even tragedy?
The great Book of Job explores these questions. . . . and you will have gathered over recent weeks, I like the book of Job. There is much to learn from it; it has a very contemporary ring to it. Now to understand Job, you need to read the book as a whole – and not just dip into it as we have again done today. Now on previous Sundays I don’t think I have provided enough context about all of this, so apologies if this background is familiar to you and repeats what we may have covered.
The book of Job has a mythic quality about it. . . . that is, it reveals profound truths but is set in an obvious framework of a story. It is not a biography of an historic figure. The story begins with this heavenly court and the challenge; would this good and upright – very prosperous and happy man Job – curse God. Deny, if you like, that life does have a meaning and purpose. Or at the end of the day assert there is in fact nothing we can believe in.
So Job is then afflicted – losing his wealth, his family and his health. Would he, with all these things happening to him, curse God? Does suffering take away the meaning of life? Can your faith cope when you face tragedy? Or putting a contemporary spin on it – what does it mean to be a Christian in the face our undoubted prosperity, religious diversity, stunning scientific capability, enormous climate shifts threatening the sustainability of our globe, debilitating wars and terrorism and at every turn, moral ambiguity?
To begin with there was the approach of Job’s comforters, his friends. In previous weeks we have dealt with the like of Eliphaz who has naively suggested all of Job’s woes are God’s punishment for sin. “The trouble befalling you is your own fault!”
I remember when I was a minister in Maryborough Queensland, 11 members of the civilian widows association in the town were killed in a bus accident. Five of these women were from my congregation. The ministers and priests in the town held a public service of grief and mourning the next evening – a thousand plus were there, the premier, the media; and as the president of the ministers’ fellowship, I led the service. One of the pastors of the many conservative congregations in that town had the responsibility of offering prayers. I don’t often remember the words of a prayer prayed 15 years or so ago, but I do remember these, “God forgive us for the sin of this town because we obviously deserved this tragedy.”
I bristled. . . and Job bristled when similar words were offered by his comforters. As I said last week it is not all about personal responsibility – there are structural inequalities we have to deal with as well. Just keep the rules and you will be blessed is too simple. . . . and so is, if you are not blessed, then you have not kept the rules. Job is defiant, he tells his friends in chapter 16 “You miserable comforters, shall your vain words have no end, I’m sick of your preaching”. He prefers to acknowledge his situation more bluntly: “God has taken me by the neck and shaken me to pieces.” Later he rails “Oh that God would hear me! And that the almighty would answer me!” . . . but still, Job does not curse God, somehow life still has meaning…just.
We then come to our passage beginning in chapter 38. Out of the whirlwind God speaks. Out of the chaos of Job’s life, God responds to Job’s whys, demands and taunts. But it is not a there, there – sorry Job for all of this, but “who is the one who dares to speak? Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Did you command the sun to rise?” Who are you, Job? Who do you think you are? These are insolent, bombastic questions God asks. What can you, a mere mortal, do? In other words shut up; just keep quiet. And in Chapter 40 that is just what Job does – “Behold I am a non entity. I spoke once, I will not speak twice.”
Ok – Job says, what is the use? I did not create the world; I did not make the sun rise. I’m just a tragic figure, broken. You, God, don’t seem to have an answer to my questions about my situation. I give in. You can’t beat the system can you?
But that is not the end of Job’s story. God speaks again; again out of the whirlwind. God attacks that attitude of Job that just because his comforters are not right, that does not mean there is no God, there is no divine presence. God pointedly asks: “Will you overturn my justice? Will you make me out to be evil in order to sustain your innocence?” (40:7,8)
So God then intriguingly says, “I made Behemoth, which I made even as I made you.” Now a Behemoth is a very large creature, possibly a hippopotamus. Then from our passage it gets more interesting “Can you draw out Leviathan with a fish hook? Can you put a hook in Leviathan’s nose? Will Leviathan speak soft words to you?” And so on. Who or what is Leviathan? Another monster of the deep, possibly a crocodile or a whale. Who knows? Both Behemoth and Leviathan are dark and ugly creatures of mythology. They are primeval forces in nature embodying great power. God has moved Job from the natural world – the wonder and beauty of creation, sunrise and sunset, then to the world of known animals – which I must admit gets all a bit more problematic at the end of chapter 38 when lions get hungry, and a perfectly wonderful creature of God is sent into the lion’s den to be the lion’s snack. But there are then these supernatural forces of Behemoth and Leviathan.
God in the process reveals something of what it is like to be God. It is not simply just a flat, mechanical world as envisioned by Job’s friends; a flat mechanical world of tit for tat rules and rewards: some giant calculus of good and evil. God shows Job the wonder and beauty of creation, but also a deeper, darker, confusing creation in which Behemoth and Leviathan live. Within the world it is not all sweetness and light. There are dark movements of evil and horror. There are events which are tragic, dark and certainly run counter to the beauty of the sunrise or the wonder of creation.
The challenge to Job, thrown out at the beginning of chapter 38, was can you control this? The implication was justice, God’s justice, is good deal more complicated than you think. Leviathan and Behemoth give us a hint of the disorder and dark chaos with which God must wrestle.
“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook, or press down its tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in its now or pierce its jaw with a hook? ((41:1-2)
God is contending not only with our petty human needs, but also with forces and powers . . . amazingly strong and dominant.
“Leviathan counts iron as straw, and bronze as rotten wood. The arrow cannot make it flee; sling stones, for it, are turned to chaff.” (41: 27-28)
God contends with such forces in the world. It is certainly not always just straight black and white. Much within the literature of the New Testament is made of the “powers” arrayed against the will of God. Paul famously suggested that indeed “the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now, and not only the creation we ourselves.” (Romans 8:22-23) We groan, the creation groans through the presence of , using the mythic language of Job, Behemoths and Leviathans. Powerful forces of hartred, greed, fear. Forces that can unleash genocide or environmental degradation. Or forces and powers of a natural kind, such as we have seen with tsunamis or pandemics.
Like Job, we all cry out against such disorder, chaos even evil within our life – and within the world. It is beyond our understanding and our human response. As God indicates to Job, out of the whirlwind, these are the forces against which God also strives. God’s reign does not mean there is no Behemoth and Leviathan. They are there in the world; yet God is not powerless in the face of them. Figuratively there are hooks, and ropes and chords with which God contends against Leviathan and Behemoth. God struggles with them to bring order out of such chaos – the whole of creation is groaning, as Paul says. Of course Paul, in this passage goes on to place this groaning struggle in broad context of the “cosmic significance of Christ” and Christ’s Spirit:
“we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we are saved.” (Romans 8:23)
This is the vision, the hope, as the Basis of Union says “the reconciliation of all things” (par 3) “God in Christ has given to all people in the Church the Holy Spirit as a pledge a foretaste of that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation” (par 3) – however, that is another story.
Today we have Job asking basic questions about meaning and faith.
A simple faith, a life of black and white “do’s and don’ts”, will not cope with the complexity and powers evident within our world today. We do live in “interesting times” – but the answer is not a rigid, dogmatic faith that will sit uncomfortably with us when tragedy befalls, or unmerited loss happens, or when the tsunami figuratively or literally strikes. Or when the Behemoths and Leviathans stir.
Nor is the answer then acceptable, there is no God whatever; and our life is just, all about us. God is still there; but it is even for God, not simple to contend with the powers of Behemoth and Leviathan.
At the end of the day Job did not curse God; he understood much more “where God was coming from”. There was meaning and purpose in life. Sometimes this is clear, and obvious, but at other times we have to struggle to discern God’s will. There will be dead ends, and we can be angry with God, and even we can for a season walk away from God. But at the end of the day, I believe we can trust that within this complex world, God shows – through the cross of Christ – that God is with us, and struggles for goodness and love; and the reconciliation of all things, as the Basis of Union says, does lie with God.
