No Suffering, No Service:  Proper 24, Year B

Job 38:1-7, 34-41; Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 104:1-9, 24, 35c;
Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

The Elves are determined that we should concentrate on redemptive suffering, brought about by obedience to the overwhelming power of God.  But Job is not about to be redeemed as a result of his suffering.  Nor is Jesus, despite the overwhelming weight of 2,000 years of orthodox Christology, bolstered by proof-texts from Isaiah and the letter to the Hebrews.  

To designate the reading from Isaiah “alternative,” which the RCL does, implies that it is not intended to complement the reading from Job.  Indeed, the instructions for the use of the Lectionary make clear that the alternative is provided for the discretion of worship leaders to consider the needs of local congregations.  “The RCL does not provide one set [of Old Testament readings] as more favored than the other, but the use of the two patterns should not be mixed” (RCL, Abingdon Press, 1992, p. 11).  These commentaries have challenged that recommendation from the beginning.  In the case of Proper 24, the readings from Job and from Isaiah 53 provide both a foil for the reading from Hebrews, and perhaps a counter to the emerging apocalypticism in Mark’s theology.

The Elves leave out the third (and final) warning that Mark’s Jesus relates about his impending death and resurrection (Mark 10:32-34).  This is unfortunate, because it illustrates another of Mark’s favorite story-telling devices: three times is the charm.  Right before this declaration, as discussed last week, Mark’s Jesus repeats the lesson first told in 9:35 that the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.  But the lesson goes unheeded by the disciples.  Instead of walking with Jesus as equals on the path, they once again let Jesus lead the Way.  He tells them (for the third time) that they are going to Jerusalem, where “the son of Adam will be turned over to the ranking priests and the scholars, and they will sentence him to death, and turn him over to foreigners, and they will . . .put him to death.  Yet after three days he will rise!”  

James and John immediately go for the gold:  “In your glory,” they say, with no thought about what happens before the “glory,” “Let one of us sit at your right hand, and the other at your left.”  The Sons of Zebedee are out of luck, but not because of some mysterious predestination hinted at by Mark’s Jesus (“sitting at my right or my left, that’s not mine to grant, but belongs to those for whom it has been reserved”).  Making Jesus able to foretell the future is a fun touch, but Mark knew when he wrote the story that Jesus’s brother James had been martyred by Herod Agrippa some years after Jesus’s death (Acts 12:2).  Jesus tells them that they have no idea what they are asking.  Right after this incident, in 10:47-45, when the other disciples get annoyed with the  Zebedee power play, Jesus says for the third (and last) time, “whoever wants to become great must be your servant, and whoever wants to be ‘number one’ must be everybody’s slave.”  Then to make the point perfectly clear, “After all, the son of Adam didn’t come to be served, but to serve, even to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark is beating us over the head with his conviction about who Jesus was, and what his message  meant.  But the Elves, like the dim-witted disciples in Mark’s story, continue to ignore it.  They pile on the complicated theology of the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, who maintains that Jesus was made perfect because of his suffering.  As an alternative, they call our attention to Isaiah’s third epic poem about the suffering servant of God, which Christendom since Paul has believed refers to Jesus.  They further obscure the point with references to Job’s suffering at the hands of God. Given the careful selectivity with which they choose what we are and are not to read, the Elves seem to want us to think that Job’s and Jesus’s suffering were God’s Will.

The portion lifted from the story of Job for Proper 24 concentrates on part of God’s Answer.  We do not read that God challenges Job to respond, nor do we read Job’s response.  God thunders God’s power, and challenges Job with impossible questions (which we also do not read): Do you know when the mountain goats give birth? Do you give the horse its might?  Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars? Is it at your command that the eagle mounts up?  And ultimately, “Shall a faultfinder contend with the Almighty?  Anyone who argues with God must respond.”  Job is rendered speechless.  If we had read the interlude, which tells us where true wisdom can be found, we would know why:  God holds all the cards.  God alone knows the way to wisdom.  God then starts a second round, even though Job has conceded defeat.

I propose that there is no connection between the story of Job and Mark’s story of Jesus.  As a bet between God and one of his lieutenants, Job suffered the loss of everything.  Despite that, he maintained his own integrity.  Job does not repudiate his own righteousness.  At the end of his defense Job says, “If my land has cried out against me, and its furrows have wept together; if I have eaten its yield without payment, and caused the death of its owners; let thorns grow instead of wheat, and foul weeds instead of barley” (31:38-40)  At the end of the story, Job’s life and fortunes are restored.  Three times, Mark’s Jesus says that he is destined (by God) to suffer and die.  “The cup I’m drinking, you’ll be drinking” (10:29).  Then in 10:45, Mark spells out his conviction that Jesus came to serve as a sacrifice – a ransom – for the sin of many.  Then, according to Mark’s theology, on the third day Jesus will rise as the apocalyptic Son of Adam, and usher in the Kingdom. 

The story of Job challenged conventional ideas about the retributive justice of God, that if you suffer it is because of your sin.  In the end, Job realizes that God is God, and that God’s justice has nothing to do with reward and punishment.  Only God knows the wisdom and the ways of God.  Mark’s story of Jesus opens the wisdom and the ways of God to everyone.  In 21st Century language, the way to God’s realm – God’s wisdom – is through the radical abandonment of self-interest in the service of distributive justice-compassion.  That service is what brings suffering and death to the one called by God to act on behalf of distributive justice-compassion.  That one often ends up on the wrong side of society’s laws.  

Throughout all the readings, regardless of the reason for or the results derived from suffering, runs a common theme of non-violence.  Job does not “curse God and die,” as recommended by his wife (2:9).  His “patience” – or endurance – in the face of calamity are proverbial.  The writer of Hebrews compares the Christ called by God to be High Priest and mediator with a “high priest chosen from among mortals.”  The high priest “is able to deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is subject to weakness.” The servant described by Isaiah “was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; . . . They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.”  Mark’s Jesus says, “You know how those who supposedly rule over foreigners lord it over them, and how their strong men tyrannize them.  It’s not going to be like that with you!  With you, whoever wants to become great must be your servant, and whoever among you wants to be number one must be everybody’s slave.”

Neither Job’s nor Mark’s story is about redemptive suffering nor – heaven forfend – substitutionary atonement.  Both stories challenge the easy piety defined by the normal systems of human society: an eye for an eye; the wealthy and healthy are blessed by God; the end justifies the means.

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