Big Questions

Job 38:1-7

Pentecost 22, October 20, 2024

Holy Trinity Cathedral

“Big Questions”

Is it better to have no answer from God or to hear what the Voice on high has to say to you?  Job may be having second thoughts.  For thirty-seven chapters, he has been pleading with God and his friends.  He has endured so many losses in his life: his home, his wealth, his family, his health.  The one thing he has not let go of is his faith.  It remains so he can ask God “Why?”  Now the Lord finally responds Job out of the whirlwind.  But it not an answer; it is a question of God’s own. Who is Job in relation to His Creator?  In the face of this extraordinary encounter, Job must feel very small.  After all, God is very big.   But in the willingness of the Divine to meet us in our questions, there is good news. 

So much of our prayer life seems to centre around asking for something- for ourselves or others.  That's not a bad thing! Intercession is asking for God help.  There’s a lot to pray about, and it’s easy to make a long list.  In our prayers of the people, we touch on various areas each week.  We pray for the Church, those in authority, our civil society, our faith community, those who are sick, those who have died, and our own need for forgiveness.  But if we are honest, we already have an idea of how God should go about setting things right. 

We don’t understand the circumstances behind some of the needs, and we cannot foresee all the consequences if God were to deliver our prayers as we direct them.  Our struggle, like Job, is trying to understand why bad things happen and how something healing and good can come out of the situation.  We have legitimate questions.  The challenge is having the assumptions that shaped our intentions turned back to us.  Not just what we are asking, but who we are asking, and how.  Do we truly know the heart of God, or is there room for humility to grow into a deeper understanding? 

Poor old Job has pleaded his case before the One who is his Judge.  He has asserted his innocence.  He hasn’t done anything wrong to deserve all the bad things that have happened to him.  But now, when he finally gets his day in court, he is the one on the hot seat to be questioned.  “I will question you, and you will answer me”, says the Lord.  God tells him to “gird up your loins like a man” (Job 38:3).  Actually, the Hebrew word is not ‘man’ but closer to  ‘hero’.  Job has to a hero; to be brave enough to face this inquiry in order to learn wisdom.  He can’t fix his world.  He can’t just tell God how to fix his world, either.  He has to listen and learn about God’s bigger plan.

If you or I were a superhero with superpowers, life would be so much easier, wouldn’t it?  We could use our gifts to help right the wrongs of the world.  At least, that’s the premise in the Marvel or D.C. universe.  But even fictional superheroes find out there are limits to their understanding.  In the beginning of Spiderman, the teenager Peter Parker is discovering that he has some unique abilities.  He doesn’t know how to use them properly.  What his Uncle Ben is seeing, however, is not this struggle but a youth’s troubled behaviour in puberty. In a crucial conversation, he tells his nephew that the changes he is going through right now will determine the man he is going to be for the rest of his life.  He, not the Bible, gives us a great proverb: “With great power comes great responsibility”.  We ask.  But in what we receive, we have to learn how to use it for good.

God has great power and has to choose how to use it. In the Lord’s words to Job, there is an assertion that the Creator has a claim on all that is.  From the foundations of the universe, all that was and is created comes from God’s purpose.  There is a divine Wisdom that shapes all things.  And there is a cosmic responsibility.  Through all of the conflicting needs of individuals and species, God has to sort out a path that reveals Divine love.  And sometimes the way we think God should act, in our limited understanding, doesn’t take into account the scope of salvation.  It is good to have a little humility about our role.

Jesus’ disciples, James and John, found out that they couldn’t petition God for just anything.  They were two of Jesus’ closest followers, and they must have thought they understood the plan pretty well.  In Mark chapter 10, they have the confidence to say to Jesus, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.”  Then they go on to request the highest offices in heaven- to sit at the right and left hand of Jesus in glory.  Our Lord quickly corrects them.  “You do not know what you are asking!.. to sit at my right hand and my left is not mine to grant but it is for those for whom it has been prepared.” Although they will have powerful roles to come as apostles of the good news, they are not to assume they know what God has in mind.  They will be heroes to the extent they are willing to be servants without thinking of their own reward. 

We won’t always know the “why”, and we won’t always see our prayers answered when and how we hoped.  But God does hear and acknowledge our questions and our prayers.  If we are ready to listen, there is something beyond our own voice in petition.  Sometimes we only experience the silence of a Love that honours our struggles.  Occasionally we are met with a Voice that asks us difficult questions.  Questions like, “Are you prepared to serve humbly so that I can do big things? With small things, I can do much.”   Although it’s frustrating to get hit with a question when I am asking, for me there also is a bit of relief that I can’t possibly have to have all the answers either.  Our “whys” are held in the love of God who sent Jesus as the servant of all, to be the master of all. Instead of God’s questions making us feel small and insignificant, they mark God’s invitation to remember we don't understand the whole plan.  Even Jesus, entrusted with the salvation of our souls, became small and insignificant like a slave in order to love us.  

Perhaps there are times when we are called to listen rather than ask.  In the words of St. Francis of Assisi:

Look at the humility of God and pour out your hearts before him. 

Humble yourselves that we may be exalted by him. 

Hold back nothing of yourself for yourself

so that He who gives himself totally to you may receive you totally.