Thomas J Parlette
“Out of the Whirlwind”
Job 38: 1-7, 34-41
10/17/21
Often on Saturday afternoons when I’m not invested in any of the college football games, I will flip around and see what movies are on. There are some movies that I will always stop and watch. Apollo 13 is one of those movies. Any of the Marvel Avenger movies will catch my eye as well. On a recent Saturday afternoon, the Ohio State game had ended and was flipping around looking for one of my favorite movies. And I happened on Forrest Gump.
Forrest Gump isn’t on my all -time Top Ten movies list, but I like it – so I stopped and watched it for awhile. I’m sure you remember the movie. Tom Hanks stars as a mentally challenged man who has a knack for stumbling his way into historic moments. The movie gave us such classic lines as “run, Forrest, run”, and “life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.”
Among his many adventures, Forrest ends up serving in Vietnam, where he meets once his close friends, Lt. Dan, portrayed by Gary Sinise. After having his legs blown off in Vietnam, Lt. Dan felt life as he knew it was over. Back home, he fell into an awful funk of despair that led to alcoholism and drugs. But somehow, he meets up again with his friend Forrest.
Lt. Dam comes to work for Forrest on his shrimp boat. One day, a hurricane comes up. Lt. Dan climbs up the netting to the top of the mast, and there swaying and swinging in the wind, he vents his anger at God. The words stream out in a furious torrent. He challenges God to appear, to show up like a man. He ridicules the God who has taken away his legs, his livelihood, his pride, his very manhood. “You call this a storm?!” he shouts into the wind.
And just then, there is a tremendous “BOOM”, a blaze of lightning and a crash of thunder. It’s as if God has responded in the winds of the hurricane, saying “I’m here” in the thunder and the lightning.(1)
Lt. Dan has a lot in common with our friend Job. I can picture Job, hanging from a mast, yelling at God about all the suffering he has endured, just like Lt. Dan.
When we left Job last week, he was complaining bitterly that God was nowhere to be found. No matter where he turned – left, right, forward, backward – God remained hidden. All Job wanted was a fair hearing before God, he wanted a day in court to air his complaints and get a few answers.
But no – God was not around, and apparently, at least in Job’s opinion, not even listening.
Well, today Job’s prayers are answered – or at least his request to have a hearing before is honored. God shows up. And as they say, “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it.”
This morning, God shows up – not with thunder and lightning, but in something resembling a hurricane. God shows up in a whirlwind. And God speaks to Job from out of the whirlwind- “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.”
Then God hits Job with some questions of his own. Actually, it seems like the same question over and over again. “Where were you?” asks God. Where were you when I created the world? God pulls rank on Job. God puts Job in his place and reminds Job that he is not God.
Now, in all honestly, this does not seem like the best pastoral response. This is not what they teach you in seminary. My pastoral care professors at Princeton would have fallen out of their chairs if any of us asked such condescending and insulting questions like – “Where were you?... What right do you have to question me?... What business is this of yours…”
No, what they teach you in Seminary is to quietly listen with compassion and be a non-anxious presence. This kind of response would have been seriously frowned upon.
On the surface, God’s response to Job seems rather heavy-handed and harsh. But be sure to look closely at the text. Notice that God never condemns Job for asking questions. God is actually reprimanding Job’s friends when talks about those who darken counsel by words without knowledge. God never demands an apology from Job for his complaining – God never tells Job that he better take it all back. God’s response to Job is not – “I’m in control, how dare you judge how I run the universe!” That’s not really what God is saying here.
God’s response is to ask Job if he understands the deep wisdom upon which the foundations of the earth were laid. God turns the tables on Job and reframes the question. God is telling Job that he needs to look for wisdom, not simply raw power, in his search for God. In other words, this is not meant to be a put down, but simply a reminder. “You are out of your league Job. I know things you can’t comprehend. I am God, and you are not.” God possesses knowledge, wisdom and power that is simply beyond our capacity to understand.
Through Job, we are reminded that we live and move and have our being in a world we did not create, with a God we cannot comprehend. Especially in a world now far advanced in scientific knowledge and technical capabilities, where many of the questions that God poses to Job can be answered scientifically, this is a timely reminder of our mortality and our limitations. However clever and searching our scientific knowledge of the natural world may be, there are limits to what we can know. Of course the greatest questions of all – Why is there something instead of nothing? Why do we exist? What is the purpose of my life? – are no more answerable today than they were in the ancient world. Job chapter 38 is an invitation to stop in our egocentric tracks, put down our mirrors, and contemplate the wonder of our existence and the awesome being and mystery of God. A God who cannot be fully known and is not accountable to humanity.
Nancy Guthrie writes, “Sometimes what causes us the most pain and confusion is hot what God says to us, but the fact that in the midst of difficulty, God seems to say nothing at all.” Just silence. The silence of God is something that has been explored by many novelists, playwrights and theologians over the years – and by most people who have gone through tough times. We may not eloquently articulate our questions, but they still boil deep within us. The answers we receive can feel inadequate to provide comfort or explain in any genuine way what bewilders and troubles us. We long to know why devastating things happen to us. Like Job, we long for understanding so we can bear the pain.
As we see today, God does answer – but with more questions, “Where were you,” and a long dramatic monologue describing birds, animals, mountains and storms – all the wonders of creation. Where were you, Job, when I made all this?
Guthrie writes, “God doesn’t explain. Instead God reveals the Divine Presence and in the midst of this awesome presence, Job’s question are not answered, they simply disappear.”
Magnificence and Mystery – those are the two “answers” the Book of Job reveals to us. We can find much wisdom, guidance and truth in God’s word, that’s true. But we also find a lot of mystery as well. Our minds cannot even frame the right questions.
We’ll never solve all the mysteries, but we know all that happens is weighted down with significance. As Guthrie writes, “Job had no idea he was a player in a cosmic confrontation.” He had no idea his faithfulness in extreme suffering mattered so much. But it did.”(2)
It does for us as well, as we worship God and pray that God will keep us faithful in these trying pandemic days. Each follower of God is a key player in this magnificent mystery.
This scene of God speaking from a whirlwind is certainly an encounter of unequal power. God is God – and Job is not. God possesses knowledge, wisdom and power that we cannot understand. Ultimately, God speaks out of the whirlwind and doesn’t provide any answers – just a sense of magnificence and mystery.
I will not claim that that is an easy thing to hear. It certainly isn’t. There is no way to wrap up Job’s whirlwind encounter with three points and a poem. It’s impossible to send you home today with a comforting sound-byte. This passage demands that we struggle with it, think deeply about it and spend time wrestling with our incomplete knowledge of an unknowable God.
What Job discovered in his whirlwind encounter is what we have been promised in Jesus Christ – that God hears our cries and feels our hurts. God cares, and shares our pain. God is present with us in our sorrow and in our suffering and gives us the courage to go on.
The word of hope I can offer today us that when we’ve exhausted our human resources, our wisdom and our knowledge – isn’t it comforting to know that God can step in like a whirlwind with Divine, unknowable power, both magnificent and mysterious, and stand with us in our suffering?
That may not be what we want to hear from this divine hurricane. But that’s what we have. And it will be enough to sustain us – as it did for Job.
God is God, and we are not. Let us find our rest in the wisdom and the power of a magnificent, mysterious God who is wiser, kinder and more powerful than we can ever know.
And for that – may God be praised. Amen.
1. Homileticsonline, retrieved 9?20/21.
2. Harold Myra, The One Year Book of Encouragement, Tyndale House Publishers, 2010, p. 287.
