Sermon Notes on           Job 1:18-22           after the Virginia Tech Massacre

¹⁸While he was still speaking, another came and said, “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, ¹⁹and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.”

²⁰Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshiped. ²¹He said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

²²In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.

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When I went through the book of Job to find an appropriate text for today’s message this one just struck me. How close can a 2500 year old text come to what is going on in our world nowadays? If you want to tell a story about what happened last Monday at Virginia Tech University it would not sound so much different. On Monday many parents were told that their children are dead. There are many people who do exactly understand how Job must have felt like after receiving such a horrible message. This is the worst thing one could imagine. But I am sure that almost nobody understands the behaviour of Job after he received the message that his children are dead.

After the massacre at Virginia Tech, I am sure that no one feels like saying: “Blessed be the name of the LORD!”. I doubt that it is possible to go on in our lives as if nothing happened. It is hard not to charge God with wrongdoing.

 

So Job’s behaviour seems to be strange. It doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.

What we would expect from Job in such a situation is confusion, frustration, and anger. What we would expect to hear from Job is to ask: “Why?”

“Why does this happen to me? I didn’t do anything wrong to deserve this!”

Many parents, spouses, brothers, sisters, friends ask the same question at the moment: “Why does this happen to us? We didn’t do anything wrong to deserve this.”

 

We all ask: Why did God let this happen?

Why did He let happen, that 32 innocent people died?    

Why did He let happen, that parents lost their children?  

Why did He let happen, that students lost their friends?  

Why did He let happen, that people suffered?       

Why did He let happen, that nobody recognized in time how dangerous this young man was?

Why did He let happen, that this young man was so troubled at all?   

 

It doesn’t make any sense to us. It doesn’t make sense because God is almighty,

God knows everything, God is good, God is love. And He is also the creator of this world. Shouldn’t we expect that our good God created a good world? But this world is not only good. There is so much evil in it. So what happened? Did God make a mistake?

 

God gave us a free will.

Did God forget something by giving us a free will?

No He didn’t. He gave us a great gift. This gift is called freedom. We have the freedom to make our own decisions. There is not limit in it, there can’t be a limit in it; this is what freedom is about: no limit. Otherwise it won’t be real freedom. You can’t say: I give you the freedom to make your own decisions but as soon as you make a wrong decision, I’ll take over. This is not freedom.

Free will also means a great deal of responsibility. Free will is not so easy to handle. We can make the wrong decisions - obviously. But God didn’t leave us alone with this responsibility. We are well equipped to handle this responsibility because God also gave us the ability to know what’s right and what’s wrong. He teaches us about right and wrong through the Bible and through Jesus Christ.

God gave us a free will on purpose. God gave us the gift to make our own decisions on purpose. We are meant to be like this. And we are meant to be good. The world is meant to be good. We have everything we need to make the right decisions, to make the world a good world. God wants us to make this world a good world. He wants us to fight for the good in this world.

 

So the question is not: Why did God let this happen?

God did not let this happen. A young man made it happen by his own free will. If we ask “Why” at all, we must ask: “Why do people make this happen? The answer is: They make it happen because they ignore the good and choose the evil by their own free will.

 

Kathleen Norris, a Christian author, says in one of her books, that suffering often makes us turn inward, “it becomes a mirror in which we see only ourselves and wonder” why this happens to us. But we “should drop the mirror and look for God.”

This is what Job did: He dropped the mirror and looked for God. And this is what made him say: “Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

 

If we should drop the mirror and look for God after Virginia Tech, it is more important to ask “Where?” instead of “Why?”

Where was God? Where is God?

 

After such an event we are in danger of loosing sight. We may not see God in all this violence and despair. For us God might have disappeared in all this darkness.

But if we look a little closer, we can see that God was there.

He was there when people died.

But He was also there when people survived.

God was there, when a teacher saved his students lives.

God was there when a student saved other students lives.

God was there when paramedics saved people’s lives.

God was there when Doctors saved lives.

God is still there.

God is there when people gather for prayer.

God is there when people give comfort and strength.

God is there when counsellors and pastors offer their help.

God is there to listen to our cries.

God is there to comfort.

God is there when people finally find peace.

 

He is there for us in bad times. He wants us to be there for Him in bad times. God wants us to be faithful and to trust in Him like Job did. It seems to be impossible in the midst of so much violence and despair. But it is possible. We can do it. We can be faithful. We can come out of this deep dark hole of doubt. We can come back into the light of trust. I remember another sermon where I was preaching about not giving up on God because He doesn’t give up on us. He never gives up on us, and he sacrificed His only son to prove it. This is the right moment not to give up on God!

 

I want to close with some words from Anselm Grün, a German Benedictine monk, who wrote in one of his books:

“I wish you the Angel of Darkness, I am not wishing that everything around you and in you should become dark. What I am asking for is that  an Angel should visit you and accompany you in your darkness. (…)If faith used to be a light to you on your way, it can happen that suddenly your faith also goes dark, that God hides behind the darkness of your heart. (…)You feel you are sitting in a dark hole and you can’t get out. (…)

So an Angel must come and climb down into this darkness and reach out its hand to these sufferers in their dark night. (…)

 In the Bible God often  sends his angel to tell people something in a dream, to show them a new way and give them the certainty that God is with them and (that) their life will succeed. Joseph sat in the deep pit with no hope of being saved. But he had been given the certainty in a dream that his life would succeed. The dream brought light into the darkness of the pit. So he did not give up, he hung on to the promise the angel had given him in his dream. My wish for you is that the Angel of Night will visit you and show you your next step (…), to lead you out of darkness and on to the road of freedom and love.”     

 

Amen