10/7/18 “Pain and Suffering” by Nancy Petty

Text: Job 1:1, 2:1-10

C.S. Lewis in his book, A Grief Observed writes: “We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, ‘Blessed are they that mourn,’ and I accept it. I’ve got nothing that I hadn’t bargained for. Of course, it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to other, and in reality, not imagination.”

The topic of suffering requires an exposed honesty. And so I begin with this confession: I am speaking this morning of something I know very little about. Sure, I have had trials and disappointments. I have experienced significant loss and deep sadness. I have gone through my own dark nights of the soul when I didn’t know if I could make it through another night or day. My people, the LGBTQIA community has known suffering—deep suffering—but I stand on the shoulders of those who bore the early suffering within the LGBTQIA community. I know very little of suffering. That is, the kind of suffering that Black America has endured since before 1640 and still endures. The kind of suffering that thousands of women like Christine Blasey Ford have bore silently for years. The kind of suffering that comes when crucified by political opinion for simply speaking truth. The kind of suffering that people with mental illness face living on our streets or in our prisons abandoned by family and community.

I am keenly aware that whatever I say about suffering this morning is fraught with problems. In seminary, now some 30 years past, under Alan Neely, I took a class called “The Problem of Evil.” For an entire semester, we read about and discussed the problem of evil and of the suffering that evil creates. In that semester, and in the 30 years that have followed, there is still in my mind no answer to the problem of evil or to the suffering of this world. One might then ask, “Why would you chose, and on of all Sunday’s World Communion Sunday, to preach on suffering?” And I would say to that person, “How can I not?”

Consider the suffering in this world. We live in a world of suffering. It falls on the just and the unjust; much of the time it falls on our children. According to the World Health Organization, an estimated 6.3 million children under 15 years of age died in 2017, or 1 every 5 seconds, mostly from diseases for which we long ago discovered cheap cures: measles, diarrhea, malaria, pneumonia, and malnutrition. The vast majority of these deaths—5.4 million—occur in the first 5 years of life. For Laura Parajon, our partner at AMOS in Nicaragua, these numbers are more than statistics. They mark the sufferings of Nicaraguans whom she works and lives with daily.

Consider the suffering in our world. There are 168 million children worldwide trapped in child labor, accounting for almost 11% of the overall child population—100 million boys and 68 million girls. Around half are engaged in hazardous work. Nearly 60% of child labor takes place in agriculture—the kind of agriculture that puts food on our tables.

Consider the suffering in our world. The trafficking of woman and children is the fastest growing crime in the world. There are an estimated 24.9 million people trapped in forced labor via human trafficking worldwide. More than 50% of trafficking victims are sexually exploited. To our Zimbabwe partners, these numbers are more than statistics. These numbers represent the suffering of their children and women. Zimbabwean children are trafficked to South Africa, Mozambique, and Zambia, where they become victims of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor in domestic work. Zimbabwean children, especially orphans, are sometimes lured by relatives with the promise of education or adoption, but instead are recruited to work within the country as domestic workers or forced to work in mining, drug smuggling, or other illegal activities. Suffering.

But suffering doesn’t just happen in far away countries. Consider the suffering right here in our country, in our communities. Just last week, the North Carolina Commission of Inquiry on Torture released their groundbreaking report on North Carolina’s involvement in the CIA torture program. In the years following 9/11, North Carolina was used as a staging ground to launch flights that picked up suspected terrorists abroad and transported them to CIA “black sites” and third-party countries where they were illegally detained and tortured. Declassified documents and news reports have confirmed that the CIA front company Aero Contractors, which is headquartered in our state (in Johnston County), used North Carolina’s aviation infrastructure and public airports to launch those “torture taxi” flights in support of the United States’ Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation program. The suffering of those detainees who endured unimaginable torture, many of whom were innocent, is unfathomable suffering.

Consider the suffering in our world, in those countries represented by these flags, and in other countries, and here in our own country. Consider the pictures you have seen of the devastation in Puerto Rica. Consider the suffering of the immigrant children detained in warehouses on American soil, separated from their parents. Consider the suffering of those living in extreme poverty in the Appalachia Mountains of Western NC. Or consider those living in Stanley, Lee, and Cumberland Counties—three NC counties with the highest opioid addiction rates.

We live in a world of suffering. It falls on the just and the unjust. It is a part of our broken world. It is part of our humanity. How can I not speak of suffering on this World Communion Sunday?

There is a second reason that I am compelled to speak of suffering today. And it is this: a faith that does not probe the hard questions of life—questions like the problem of evil and of suffering—lacks integrity. A faith that does not speak to nor recognize the human condition of pain and suffering is not a faith that has integrity.

And it is for these two reasons—the sufferings of our world and the need for a faith that persists in integrity—I will take few moments on this World Communion Sunday to reflect on the question of suffering through the experience of Job.

Virginia Woolf once wrote to a friend: “I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes out of it well.” Woolf has named what all of us think when we read the book of Job. What do we do with a story in which God makes a divine wager with Satan, “using [an innocent man] as an unwitting pawn in their game?” What do we do with a story where God, God’s self, seems to invite suffering upon a faithful, blameless person?

“God—at least on an initial reading—does not come out of this book well.
And yet, this book, difficult as it is, has spoken to people of faith through the centuries. Job, in the great lament tradition of ancient Israel, wrestles profoundly and honestly with God. Job holds on to God with fierce faith, but he does not let God off the hook for the inexplicable suffering that so often shadows this world.” In fact, the narrator reminds us throughout the first two chapters that Job “persists in his integrity” as he struggles with his suffering and of his faith. So how are we to hear Job’s story; and what does it tell us about God and about human suffering?

First, it is helpful to understand that the book of Job is not history. It is not about factual places or people or events. It is folklore. There is no place called Uz. In fact, the prologue to the book of Job may be evidence of a folktale known in ancient Israel about a righteous man named Job, a man “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.” In other words, the book of Job should be read as a parable. “No one knows when the book was composed, but it is obviously responding to a crisis of some sort (perhaps the Babylonian Exile). What does one say about God and faith in the midst of underserved and extreme suffering? The writer of Job, most scholars agree, takes the folktale of Job and uses it as the framework for addressing that question.”

And so, as we like to say here at Pullen, “Just because it didn’t happen doesn’t mean it isn’t so.” So what does this story mean—for us, today?

What strikes me most about Job’s story is the willingness of his three friends—Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar—to be witnesses to his suffering. Listen to that part of the story.

Now when Job’s three friends heard of all these troubles that had come upon him, each of them set out from his home…They met together to go and console and comfort him. When they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him, and they raised their voices and wept aloud; they tore their robes and threw dust in the air upon their heads. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.

The story of Job paints for us a profound picture of what it means to offer a ministry of presence. It shows us what an appropriate response to the sufferings in our world looks like. It reminds us that while we cannot take away the sufferings of others, we can be witnesses to the suffering of those around us. We can raise our voices and weep aloud at the sight of suffering. In the place of tearing our clothes and throwing dust in the air upon our heads, we can march and protest and write letters. We can become places of sanctuary. We can fight for immigration reform. We can sit at a roundtable, or on the sidewalk or in a parking lot and listen to the stories of those suffering from hunger and homelessness and mental illness. The suffering in our world needs witnesses—compassionate and caring witnesses who will simply sit and look suffering in the eyes. It may very well be that the person sitting beside you this morning needs a witness to their suffering. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are here this morning asking, “How willing are we to be witnesses to the suffering in our world?” Instead of looking away when we see suffering, can we have the courage and strength to look suffering in the eye and have compassion—to just sit with it for days and nights?

The other thing that strikes me about this parable of Job is that we would rather believe that God causes suffering than believe that God has no control over suffering. It is right there in black and white. Chapter 2, verse 6. “The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’” Even the storyteller of Job fell for it. Blame God. Make God the cause of suffering. But what if suffering and pain is, in C.S. Lewis’ words, “part of the program?” What if pain and suffering is a part of what it means to be human and to live in a broken and bruised world? If Lewis is right, then we face a different question. The questions becomes: Can we, like Job, persist in integrity as people of faith and accept, even believe that God has no control over our suffering? Our world doesn’t need more religious people who believe in a God that causes suffering or in a God who has control over who suffers and who doesn’t. No, our world needs more people of faith who are willing to be witnesses to the suffering in our world because we believe that God, too, bears witness. Our world needs people who will not cast their eyes away from or shield their eyes from what is hard to look upon. Our world needs people who will go and sit with and console and have compassion for the Jobs of this world. People who raise their voices and weep aloud at the sight of suffering, knowing that God is suffering with us.

Whether it is your own suffering or the suffering of another this I believe: the sufferings of this world are not the results of a divine wager between God and Satan. Whether it is your own suffering or the suffering of another this I know: we all need someone who is willing to be a witness to the pain and suffering we are promised as people living in a broken and bruised world. Someone you know needs you to be their witness. And, if we are honest, most of us are in need of someone who is willing to sit with us and witness our pain and suffering. If we can possess the vulnerability and the courage to be witnesses to each other’s pain and suffering and that of the world, we will have persisted in integrity and we will begin to redeem the sufferings of this world.

We all want to make meaning of suffering. This week I ask you to lay down the need to understand why, and be willing to sit with Job on the ground for seven days and seven nights, and not speak a word to him, knowing that his suffering is very great. That willingness to bear witness may be the only meaning we need.