Poolesville Presbyterian Church
10.28.12; Rev. David Williams
It is candy season, that great festival of sweet-tooth gorging that we’ve come to know as All Hallows Eve. The sheer volume of America’s Trick-or-Treat confection consumption just boggles the mind. In the year of our Lord Two Thousand and Eleven, for instance, Americans bought six hundred million pounds of candy to celebrate the season. Six. Hundred. Million. Pounds.
That’s the equivalent of 16 billion fun size Snickers bars. I pulled together a few quick calculations, assuming one-point-five inches in length per fun size bar, and figured that if you mushed those together into one long Snickers bar, it would wrap all the way around the Earth at the equator, then stretch all the way up to the moon, and then wrap all the way around the moon with a few thousand miles of Snickers left over dangling in space for passing extraterrestrials.
We eat a whole bunch of candy, we do, although this year we may be hunkered down in our basements as Sandy howls “Trick or Trick! Trick or Trick!” through the trees outside. So the rule for Halloween candy purchases on the East Coast this year is changed. Instead of picking stuff you aren’t going to eat before the first kid comes to your door, pick candy you both like and can see yourself living on for a week.
I like candy, I do. But too much candy, well, it’s just not good for you. Take my very favorite candy in the world, which would be sour gummy cola bottles, particularly if they are very slightly stale, which makes them even more satisfyingly chewalicious. I can put down a pack of sour gummy cola bottles in thirty seconds.
But if that was what I had to eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, each day and every day, I’d hate it. And my teeth would implode, and I’d gain fifty pounds. It would be horrible.
I feel sort of that way this political season when it comes to economics. On the one hand, we have one political party telling us the same thing that they’ve been telling us for thirty years. To balance the budget, they say, you just have to cut taxes and everything will magically fix itself through the miracle of Keynesian economics. Of course, the promised budget cuts that would have need necessary to make that work? They cut programs that people need, or that funnel money into your congressional district, so...let’s just put that off a bit, why don’t we?
On the other hand, we have a political party that is telling us that all we have to do is soak the rich, and once we’ve shaken down Daddy Warbucks for every penny he’s got, everything will be fine. But most of the rest of us are asked for no sacrifice, no shared effort. Nothing significant is expected of us. What we get is highfalutin’ talk, coupled with a diet of dessert, sweet sugary nothing. The real meal is nowhere to be seen.
There are two stories, or the conclusion of two stories, in the passage we heard from the Book of Job today. Job is a fascinating, challenging, and complicated book, one that includes some fascinating tensions. Most significantly, Job is woven together out of two very distinct components. The first component contains a story, told in simple prose. That part of Job runs from chapter one verse one through to chapter two verse thirteen...and then stops, only to restart again in chapter forty four verse seventeen.
That’s the familiar tale. Job, an honest, faithful, and successful man, gets tested by Satan. He loses everything he has, his wealth and his children and his health. But through all of his loss, he refuses to reject God. Even confronted with three “friends” who challenge him, he remains steadfast. Finally, after the test is complete, Job gets rewarded. He gets back a better house, more wealth, a very large volume of sheep, and apparently, even better children. ‘Cause you know, if you lose children, replacing them makes it all better.
He has seven sons, and three daughters, and it is the daughters who are particularly special, so special they get special names. Jemimah means “dove,” which symbolizes gentleness. Keziah means “cinnamon,” which is fragrant and valuable. And Keren-happuch means “box of cosmetics.” Seriously. It literally means “container of eyeshadow,” which...I guess...means she was attentive to her appearance. Better than naming her “Lipgloss,” I suppose.
It’s an old story, likely a retelling of an ancient tale of a pious man that wasn’t even originally part of the Jewish tradition. The name Job, scholars note, is not a Hebrew name, and neither are the names of his three friends. But this story has cross-cultural legs, perhaps in part because it is relatively simple, easy, and straightforward. Do right, and be steadfast, and you will be rewarded. Couldn’t be easier.
But as it was brought into the telling of the Jewish people, it got richer and more complex. Into this older tale was woven a related but different story, one that was considerably more complex than the simple story we’ve been taught. It’s a dialog between Job, his friends, a young man named Elihu, and finally, the Creator of the universe. It is told entirely in poetry, written in language that indicates it came from the pen of a scholar with a gift for the art of writing. It relates Job’s faithful challenge to God, and God’s reply.
I have done nothing wrong, Job says. I have served God all my life. If I have held up my end of my commitment to God, why should God not protect me? His friends challenge that assertion, insisting that Job must have done something to justify what he is experiencing. Job refuses to cede the point. Back and forth the conversation goes, until finally God himself arrives, and Job...having been heard...stands down.
That poetic center comprises thirty-nine and a half out of the forty-two chapters of the book. It is theologically challenging, rich with meaning, and not the sort of thing that can be easily or simply encapsulated. It’s the high-fiber existential core of the book, demanding sustained attention and focus.
But as this book is popularly presented, what we mostly get is nibbling away at the outer shell, the easily understood, straightforward tale of a righteous man rewarded. We get the simpler part, the easy-to-digest fable, with the long heart of poetry and struggle and suffering and godforsaken loss taken out.
And that, as a people accustomed to immediate gratification, is kind of what we want to hear. It was hard, says the story, briefly, but then he got riches beyond even his wildest avarice! Things were bad, says the story, but he just stuck it out with his sticky stick-to-itiveness, and then it was extra-super-awesome, as pouring out of heaven’s bounty come fourteen thousand sheep, six thousand camels, a thousand donkeys, and a lifetime supply of unusually effective air freshener.
If that’s the total of our takeaway, just the easy part, then we do not understand recovery or restoration, of either self or country. If all we want is the candy, the sweet crunchy shell, then our encounter with the reality of what it takes to rebuild life and relationship after loss or collapse, after crushing failure or betrayal will be beyond us. We will expect it not to reach deep into us, and not to change us.
A little sweetness in life is fine and dandy. But if all we want is the candy, then we will not have the strength that real relationship with God gives us...both as a people and individually...to do what must be done to fix the broken things around and within us.
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