Sermon: "Skin for Skin"

Scripture Intro - Job 1:1; 2:1-10

The Book of Job is one of the rare biblical writings that is not set in a particular time or place in history.

The author is unknown and the exact age is unknown.

It is one of those iconic and timeless stories that people have turned to throughout the ages, because it speaks to a common longing and wondering that we all share:

Why is there suffering in our world and what role does God play in our suffering?

The ancient author of Job imagines a conversation taking place between God and Satan that results in the "testing" of one of God's loyalist followers - Job. 

This is the story of a man who has it all – good health, wealth, and a loving family.

Then little by little he loses it all – his crops fail, his home is destroyed, his skin erupts in festering boils, and every person he has ever loved either dies or leaves him.

In the end the only thing Job has left is his faith – but even then he questions why God has allowed him to fall so far.

The book of Job also contains the earliest biblical appearance of Satan.

Here Satan is not the fallen angel who presides over evildoers in Hell while sporting red horns and a pitchfork – that image would develop much, much later, instead he is an angelic member of God's royal court, or heavenly council of advisors. 

We get the name "Satan" from the Hebrew phrase used here in the book of Job - "Ha-Satan", which literally means, "The Accuser" or "The Adversary."

It was ha-satan who advised God by playing the role of devil's advocate  – no pun intended.

When God said, “Have you considered this…”

Ha-satan would say, “Ah, but have you also considered this…”

So, when God said, “Look at my servant Job – He is so loyal there is nothing that can cause him to turn on me,”

Ha-satan replied, ”Challenge accepted.”

The Rev. Maureen R. Frescott

Congregational church of Amherst, UCC

October 7, 2018 – Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Job 1:1; 2:1-10

“Skin for Skin”

On October 9^th of last year, a mother in Ottawa, Canada posted a picture on Facebook of her son.

The picture showed 17-year-old Jonathan Pitre, seated in a motorized wheelchair as he exited through a pair of hospital doors. 

All we can see in the photo is the back of Jonathan’s chair, the open doors, and the illuminated Exit sign above.

Underneath the photo was the following quote:

“Today I close the door to the past, open the door to the future, take a deep breath, step on through and start a new chapter of my life.”

Jonathan’s mother, Tina, added these words:

“Today I am thankful that you never give up...

You are the epitome of strength, determination and courage.”

Jonathan Pitre was born with a rare genetic skin disorder known as EB –

Epidermolysis Bullosa.

With this condition, the collagen, or glue that holds the layers of skin together is missing.

The skin can tear or blister at the slightest touch.

Something as simple as putting on a shoe or a t-shirt can cause chronic wounds.

Eating and swallowing food can cause sores in the mouth and scarring of the esophagus.

The disease also causes chronic anemia, malnutrition, and inhibits growth, because most of the nutrients the body absorbs are used in the 24/7 task of repairing damage to the skin.

Children born with this condition are known as Butterfly Children, because their skin is as fragile as a butterfly’s wing.

Jonathan left the hospital on that early October day having lived his entire life with this condition.

We might imagine what it’s like to be a child, wanting to run and play and explore the world around us, and not being able to,

because the world around us is literally too dangerous for us to be in.

Jonathan endured many years of hospitalizations, operations, and treatments.

But thankfully, his life wasn’t all about pain and suffering.

The community in Ottawa embraced him as their Butterfly Boy, making him a local celebrity.

And the Ottawa Senators pro hockey team even made him an honorary member, holding a press conference last spring where he signed a contract and received a jersey, fulfilling a young boy’s lifelong dream.

On the day his mother posted the photo, Jonathan was leaving the hospital -

a year after receiving a stem cell transplant that in itself was dangerous and painful - but which essentially gave him back the collagen he was missing, and allowed his skin to begin healing on its own.  

After a lifetime of suffering and pain, both Jonathan and his mother could finally look past that hospital door and have hope for a future that up until then, neither had ever imagined could happen.

“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?”

This question that Job asks his wife is one that many of us have asked in our lifetime.

At the time, Job is sitting on pile of ashes, picking at the boils on his skin, having lost everything he owned and nearly everyone he loved.

Yet he refuses to give up hope in a God of mercy and goodness.

He essentially shrugs his shoulders and says, “You have to take the good with the bad – one can’t be separated from the other.”

The question Job’s wife asks is also one that many of us have asked in our lifetimes.

With our focus on Job, we often forget that she too has lost nearly everything – her home has been destroyed, her animals and crops have been burned, and all of her children are dead.

So she looks at Job, who still clings to a thread of his faith, and she says “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die."

Job's wife was dumbfounded as to how could he still believe in a God of goodness and mercy, when God’s reward for their unfaltering obedience was to inflict untold suffering.

What makes the story of Job so brilliant and relevant, even as the ancient tale that it is, is that it includes such a multi-faceted representation of our very human questions about the existence of suffering in our world.

While Job is initially resistant to follow his wife down the path of blaming God for his fate, his friends eventually get in on the act, and push him over the edge.

They come to supposedly “comfort” him in his fallen state,

and in doing so they lay their own convoluted understanding of suffering upon his already weary shoulders.

One tells him not to give up hope, for surely he is a good man and God never punishes the good.  

All he needs to do is pray, and wait for his good fortune to return.

Still another tells him to accept the blame, for surely he has sinned against God, because God only punishes those who sin. 

All he needs to do is repent, and wait for God to bless him once again.

There’s seems to be a lot of waiting in our suffering.

Waiting for good fortune to return.

Waiting for our pain to subside.

Waiting for some kind of reason or purpose or answer to our question that explains why misfortune or illness or calamity has filled our life,

pushing out the joy and the hope and the light that once illuminated the darkness before us.

As the book of Job so poetically shows us, trying to explain the existence of suffering in our world is always an exercise in futility.

Yet we never cease trying.

Nowhere is our search to find meaning in our suffering more evident than in the wake of a natural disaster.

When an earthquake hit Haiti in 2010, television cameras captured a man tearfully exclaiming, “God is good!! God is good!!” after he learned that his daughter was found alive in the rubble of a Haitian hotel.

But when a few hours later he learned a mistake had been made and his daughter had died, along with 100,000 others who lost their lives in the earthquake - 

I wondered if for him the goodness of God was now in doubt.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, several prominent Christian leaders made the claim that the storm was punishment for the sins of the city.

Yet the French Quarter – a haven for many of the alleged punishable sins - was left largely untouched by the flooding, while the impoverished areas of the city were devastated.

And I wondered, what kind of God punishes people for being poor?

In the aftermath of the last big Tsunami that hit Indonesia, back in 2004, where 200,000 people were lost to the power of the sea,

a group of refugees approached a Jesuit priest in one of the many camps that sprang up after the disaster.

The refugees told the priest that they were interested in converting from Hinduism to Christianity.

“Our God has failed us,” they said. “Maybe yours will do better.”

The thing about Job and his reaction to the many disasters that came into his life in such a short period of time, is that he followed a very similar pattern of denying, blaming, and rejecting.

When his home, his servants, his livestock, and even his children were taken from him he tore his clothes and collapsed face down in the dust, but still he said, “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but God is still good all the time.”

But as Ha-satan, the accuser, said to God, “A man will give up everything he has to save his own skin. But if you reach out and touch his flesh, he will curse you and despise you.”

And sure enough, it is soon after Job is left scraping his sores with potshards on a pile of ashes, that he raises his fist to God and says,

“How could you do this to me, I curse you and the day that I was even born.”

It’s when suffering gets closer to us – close enough to prick our own skin – that it becomes much harder to shake off, excuse, or explain away.

How often do we praise God for blessing us, when suffering lands in someone else’s home instead of our own?

How often do we shake our heads at those who’ve experienced suffering as a result of poverty, racism, addiction, or assault,

because we can’t help but wonder what they must have done to cause or contribute to their own pain?

How often do we question God’s presence in our life and struggle to find hope, when our own suffering becomes too heavy and too deep for us to carry or crawl out of?

This is not a judgment or moralizing wagging of the finger at us all,

but rather a naming of our common human experience.

The book of Job’s multi-faceted look at suffering resonates with us, because it is us.

As is Job’s ability to transcend his personal suffering, and to still find hope, and joy, and meaning in a life where God asks us to love and trust, and accept that we will never have all of our great questions answered.

That’s not an easy thing to do.

Which is why we find inspiration in those who find the will to do it.

17-year-old Jonathan Pitre had a lot to teach us about what it means to be skin deep in suffering and still find joy and hope in the world.

Earlier this year he contracted an infection that his weakened body could not fight and on April 6^th – just 6-months after he left the hospital – Jonathan Pitre passed away.

Even as he resigned himself to a future that no longer held the hope of his own healing, he found hope in what he could do to aid someone else’s healing.

He compared his hopeful outlook to a wave.

He told his mother,

“A wave starts out small but it gets bigger and bigger.

I want to make sure when I leave, that wave is big enough to keep going on its own.”

In the book of Job, we find a wave that has continued to lap at our feet and wash over us for thousands of years -

as we search for God in a world that is full of complexities and paradoxes – great acts of love and extreme examples of suffering –

that defy our understanding.

But it’s where love, and hope, and healing, connect with our suffering, that we find the greatest meaning of all.

It’s in our Creator God, 

who moves through us and through others in our life, 

that we find the strength to close the door to the past, 

open the door to the future, 

take a deep breath, 

step on through 

and start a new chapter of our life.

Each and every day.       

Thanks be to God, and Amen.