Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

Christian Response To Jobian Suffering

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, June 23, 2024

What is that thing, that reality, that human experience that the vast majority of the people in the world dread and want to keep at bay? Human suffering! Human tragedy! And the threat of death! Surprisingly, these realities are on full display in our first reading (Job 38:1, 8-11) and the Gospel (Mark 4:35-41). As you already know, the most challenging book in the entire Bible is the Book of Job. It is a book that beguiles both the believer and the unbeliever, the young and the not too young. And the key troubling issue about the book of Job is the suffering of the just. It has continued to be on the minds of people up and down the centuries. 

Job is presented as an entirely righteous man, a good man, an upright man that walks with God. And he enjoys the blessings of his moral excellence. He has a functional family; he is blessed with wealth and has an admirable position in the society. But then something happens in the spiritual realm. God and Satan engaged in some kind of conversation. In that conversation, Satan tells God that the reason why Job is his friend is because God has blessed Job bountifully. But if he takes away all those blessings, Job would curse God. Surprisingly, God accepts the challenge. He allows Satan to strip Job of all his blessings. Thus, in one terrible swoop, Job loses everything. He loses his family, his loved ones. He loses all of his possessions. Add to that, he loses his health. In one fell sweep, everything he had and had enjoyed is stripped away. At the beginning of his woes, Job does not curse God. But as his suffering persists and intensifies, he falls, understandably, into depression. For seven days, Job sits on an ash heap sullen and mourning. He is joined by three friends, who sit silently with him. If you are involved in pastoral ministry, this approach is a welcome one. Rather than say something that might undermine or trivialize a person’s pain, just sit in silence. It is a rather beautiful gesture. After sitting in silence for seven days, Job’s friends began to speak and  articulate what most of us would consider a pretty commonsensical argument: Job, you must have done something bad to bring all this evil upon yourself. I know you look like you’re righteous, but you must have done something wrong because God is punishing you. 

But Job knows he’s righteous, and so he protests. Eventually, he dismisses the three friends, and then, in one of the most dramatic scenes in the Bible, he calls God into the dock, challenging God to explain why God has allowed him to suffer this way. In his deep anguish, Job cursed the day he was born, “Perish the day on which I was born, the night when they said, ‘The child is a boy!’ May that day be darkness: may God above not care for it, may light not shine upon it! May darkness and gloom claim it, and clouds settle upon it….” (Job 3:5). Job has had enough and he is speaking up, not to his friends, but to God. Job speaks for anyone who has gone through undeserved suffering. Job calls and challenges God: Why? Why would you allow this? Why would you preside over my misfortune and pain? Isn’t this the same question we hear all the time when people suffer? We may have posed similar questions too. Growing up in Nigeria without my father and without any honest helper or guide, I asked that kind of question too. And as a priest for almost 17 years, people in pain and suffering have come to me expressing those sentiments. But in Chapter 38 of the Book of Job, where our first reading for this weekend is taken from, God answers Job and basically takes him on a tour of the universe that Job does not know and did not contribute anything in putting into place. What is particularly interesting about God’s speech to Job is that it is almost about the non-human world. It is about aquatic animals, terrestrial animals, about the sea, about the cosmic realities and not about human affairs. What is God getting at? What does God want us to pay close attention to? God’s providence! God’s providence has to do with human affairs and with everything in the world. Everything we can see and cannot see is under the protective care of God. God is in-charge!

In our Gospel, Jesus and his disciples were in a boat together crossing to the other side.  The phrase, “crossing to the other side,” is evocative of our life on earth, which is basically a journey, a crossing to the other side. It is not always going to be a smooth sail, an unperturbed ride. Occasionally, something imperfect, something we don’t want will happen. But why must it be so? Because the world is a hospital and all of us, in some degree, are sick. We are all patients in this vast world. We are imperfect and from time to time, our actions are motivated by our imperfections. And God allowed imperfect things to happen to us. Why? One, adversity could be a test of your faith. Two, it can be redemptive. How? Suffering can rattle you and wake you up to start paying attention to something you have ignored for a long time. Think of a young man who refuses to cut back his drinking habit. If his doctor now tells him that he has liver cirrhosis and could die young, I tell you, he will make the change needed to survive. Three, misfortune can change your world-view about life, wealth, power, honor, pleasure, beauty, possession etc. It is capable of turning your life around. Four, human tragedy can make you more compassionate. A black nurse working in a hospital recounted how her non-black patients, having found themselves suffering and facing death in the hospital, became more human and more humane. Five, it can jolt and shock you and make you realize this biblical prayer, “Lord, make us know the shortness of our life that we may gain wisdom of heart,” (Psalm 90:12). 

What is the right response to Jobian suffering?  If you are having Jobian experience at this moment, what should you do? Take a cue from the disciples of Jesus. They were going to the other side with Jesus in the boat. Was the trip smooth? Not at all! Saint Mark says that “a violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat, so that it was already filling up.” Their treasured life is under a serious threat. And as this is taking place, Jesus is in the back, sleeping. Shocked and bewildered, the disciples woke him and said, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” Jesus wakes up, rebukes the wind and says to the sea, “Quiet! Be still.” Listen everybody, Jesus is in the boat with you. You are not alone and will never be alone as you cross to the other side. But if you face any storm just as the first disciples faced, and you feel that Jesus is silent, approach him and confidently say, “Lord, don’t you care that I am perishing?”