B245 Pentecost 23

[00:00:05] Speaker A: You're listening to by the well, a lectionary based podcast, preachers recorded on the land of the Wurundjeri people. Hello, everyone. I'm Fran Barber. [00:00:18] Speaker B: And I'm Howard Wallace. [00:00:20] Speaker A: And Howard and I are here to discuss the readings for the 23rd week after Pentecost or the 30th week in ordinary time for Sunday, October 27. And we're going to be looking particularly at job 42, one, six and ten to 17, psalm 34, verses one to eight and 19 to 22, and the Gospel of Mark, chapter ten, verses 46 to 52. So how this is the fourth or fifth week in the lectionary, fourth, where we're looking at job, and we have before us the resolution or otherwise. Or otherwise. So those who haven't been listening consistently, I do encourage you, if you want to preach on Job, to listen to the episodes either with Sally and Robyn or Monica and Miguel de la Torre and others just before us, that really do grapple with the theodicy questions of suffering and I suffering upon suffering and job's righteousness and his refusal to accept the trite explanations of his friends for what's happening to him. Because those themes need to be intertwined with dealing with today's passage, don't they? Because this was a very tight little, pretty little bow to wrap around a very, very awkward and ugly situation. [00:01:59] Speaker B: Yes, today we're dealing with the end and dealing with it exegetically because it needs to be looked at in close detail. But just to remind people, job is a long book, 42 chapters, and there are two sections to it. There's a sort of bookend thing going on with the prose section way back in chapters one and two. It set up the, the competition, if you like, between God and the Satan or the accuser, which resulted in the affliction of Job to test out his righteousness over time. And then we've had the long story of job sort of talking to his friends, and ultimately he is requested to see God. After all, God's the one who, according to their thinking, has caused the problems. So he does see God in the end, but God comes in and delivers a rather strong lecture to him. And now we get the sort of resolution Job's response to that statement by God. [00:03:05] Speaker A: And we need to remember, don't we, that this, as Sally and perhaps others have emphasized, this is a story. It's. Yes, it's written to reveal certain themes and truths about human existence and our relationship to goddess. So he's from us. Job is from us, which does not exist. [00:03:26] Speaker B: No, it doesn't. We don't know any place called that. [00:03:28] Speaker A: So that's a good reminder. [00:03:30] Speaker B: The other things we need to remember too, is that no place, name or other than us or anything else is in the book to give us any clues of date or place, location, etc. Etc. And these stories, like the story of Job, are also present in egyptian and mesopotamian literature. So this is probably a very ancient style of, if we want to call it a bit of modern term, a philosophical sort of discussion about the issue of suffering. [00:04:05] Speaker A: Yes. And isn't, I mean, job is wisdom literature and biblically, here is one that problematizes a lot of the other wisdom literature, which sees a certain order to creation and life and a logic to it. And job is here to say, uh. [00:04:24] Speaker B: Uh, yes, he's proposing an alternative perspective to the sort of wisdom you might get in the book of proverbs and even some of ecclesiastes. [00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah. So he begins in this chapter we've, in this section we have before us. We've got him quoting God. [00:04:40] Speaker B: Yes, twice. [00:04:42] Speaker A: I know that you can do things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? So, I mean, we, I think what we. Well, I think what we see here is that job has heard God. Yes. And he admits his humanity before God. [00:05:02] Speaker B: And the freedom of understanding. [00:05:03] Speaker A: Yes. And the freedom that God has, that is utterly mystifying. Yes. And, but that he, now he needs to, he, job needs to just be at peace with that as much as he can, seems to be his conclusion. [00:05:17] Speaker B: And he goes on again quoting God in verse four here. And I will speak, I will question you and you declare to me, so this is job speaking, but he's quoting words of God. And then job comes back and says, I've heard you by the hearing of the ear, and now my eye sees you. So these are the things he had requested of God to be confronted by God, to hear what God's own explanation of his problem, and presumably to hear some sort of answer. But then has he heard an answer? I don't think he has. Not from God. [00:05:52] Speaker A: So it's not that God gave one and Job didn't hear it, it's that there was no answer. [00:05:57] Speaker B: No, I think God is speaking, put in my terms, in a level of mystery that is beyond job. And to some extent, Job does admit that. But then we get to the real crux of this whole book, actually, the very last statement of Job in verse six. And the NRSV says, and many other bibles like it, therefore, I will despise myself, job speaking and repent in dust and ashes. Now there's some real problems with that text and that translation. [00:06:31] Speaker A: Yes. [00:06:32] Speaker B: And the very first one is it says, therefore, that's fine. And then we have the verb I despise. That's fine too. But the word myself that appears in the NRSV and in a number of other versions is not in the Hebrew. Now the verb despise requires an object to despise something. We do not know if we're honest, what job is despising, whether he's, as the Bible translation that I've got in front of me says, is he recanting on his argument in the past or not? And I'm not quite sure we can see so clear about that. And then it says, and repent. That verb is again clear. But then we have the phrase in dust and ashes. Now the little preposition translated there as in can mean a whole lot of things, can mean upon or on by, on account of, regarding and a whole host of other meanings. So how is he repenting in dust and ashes? And what is he repenting of? It leaves us really up in the air a bit. [00:07:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I read about that as well, particularly that it could be of dust and ashes. And I'm always quite intrigued by the theological implications of shifting these prepositions or these little words. Yes, I mean, if he's repenting of dust and ashes. [00:08:05] Speaker B: What? [00:08:07] Speaker A: That's quite a significant thing to do. That's opting out of. [00:08:11] Speaker B: Opting out of the argument. [00:08:12] Speaker A: The argument or the relationship, almost. No. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Or at least the. I mean, he's in dust and ashes because he's suffering. This is what one might expect of him in that sort of context. And there's implication too that he's done something wrong. This is what his three friends are all arguing different ways, but he's not having a bar of that. So is he getting rid of that whole sort of thing that has shaped his action to this past, the retribution. [00:08:46] Speaker A: Logic, is he getting rid of that? I mean, my take would be he never accepted that. [00:08:51] Speaker B: No. [00:08:52] Speaker A: Anyway. And what I find problematic, well, not just me, but in this passage before us is that, that retribution logic that has been disputed and dismissed throughout the book. Well, his friends has presented it and he has rejected it. And God has as well, is actually being employed with this sort of the ending from verse ten onwards, wherever everything is so fantastic, I want to have a last paragraph that says, and then I woke up. It is so amazingly wonderful. But so you know that this, all this good stuff came to job because he repented. So you've got this retributive that the logic is happening even here, only positively. So it's contradicting itself. [00:09:42] Speaker B: It is. That's why I think I've always had this sort of feeling that whoever's added the, the prose bit from verse seven right through to the end of the chapter 42 has not been able to cope with the uncertainty of the ending of the poetry, which is right at verse six. So you've got two options, which is the normal way that people have taken it and some of our Bible translations do, and many commentators is that job does in some ways recant his previous argument. He gives in to goddess, says, okay. [00:10:14] Speaker A: And accepts the mystery essentially. [00:10:16] Speaker B: Yes, yes. And. Well, there may be some truth in that, I think. But the other option is that he's just got to a point where he's made his point, he's heard God, and there's not much more to say. He still does not understand why he's suffering. [00:10:32] Speaker A: Well, I mean, the pastoral implications and dimensions of this are very profound for when we're preaching into our congregations where there will be people who are or definitely have endured unimaginable things. And navigating, particularly this last portion versus ten to 16 is really tricky because that isn't how life is. It does not tied up in a bow when you do the right, you know, you do supposedly the right thing. And then, and so taking seriously where Joel Joe believes it, as you previously explained just now explained as a mystery, as inexplicable, but not alone in the inexplicable, you know, in that inexplicability. [00:11:17] Speaker B: I mean, I think if we're going to take ten to. Oh, sorry, verses seven to verse 17, the prose bit seriously in some level, then I have to acknowledge, well, maybe what it is saying is even if we cannot answer the questions that job has put, and even if in a way, confronting God, you know, the mystery that's associated with God is beyond our understanding, yet maybe there is a sense in which God is doing things beyond what we experience and understand in ourselves. [00:11:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:53] Speaker B: So while we must admit that we just don't understand the way the world works sometimes in relation to faith in God, nevertheless, that doesn't mean we give up on our faith itself. [00:12:09] Speaker A: I mean, I think that it's something in job does change. Like it must change from what he. Yeah, in what he has gone through in terms of the pastoral dimension for us in preaching. And so there's something about the book perhaps suggesting that this new experience means we need to speak newly about God, or he does need to speak newly about God, as we do when things confront us, we are at least told. [00:12:38] Speaker B: In the prose at the end that what job has said has been right. God acknowledges that. And the argument of the three friends was not right in God's eyes. [00:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:12:50] Speaker B: So I think it's sort of dealing with, in a way of living with the mystery of God and the issue of suffering in particular, but nevertheless maintaining hope in God. It reminds me of a line that comes in Archibald MacLeish's sort of play, 1950 odd play on Job called JB. And he has this memorable phrase that sums up the problem itself. If God is God, he cannot be good. If God is good, he cannot be God. So how do you live with. [00:13:34] Speaker A: Yeah, that's not good news. [00:13:37] Speaker B: That sort of sums up the problem, I think. [00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We haven't interrogated. We probably should move on to the next couple of readings in a moment. But these final verses after the poetry, the fortunes are restored. I mean, Job's got twice as much. He's restored. Community is restored to him multifold. Brothers and sisters who. And they ate bread. They ate together. They showed him sympathy and comfort, like everything is coming that he wanted. His days are blessed more than ever. And I suppose I want to highlight particularly that his children, his daughters are named here specifically. They've got gorgeous names, too. And jemima means grace, I think. [00:14:19] Speaker B: Wait a minute, I had something else. It actually means dove. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Oh, dove. Biggie pun or peace, maybe. And Keziah is. That means fragments. Fragments. [00:14:28] Speaker B: Cinnamon. [00:14:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:14:29] Speaker B: And then the last one is eyeshadow. It's a gorgeous name. [00:14:33] Speaker A: Right. So these are girls in the patriarchal society, daughters who would not normally be named like they're named here and the sons aren't. And they're given an inheritance, which is largely unheard of, I would have. Would conjecture. So there's a real reordering of power and patriarchy in this ending as well. [00:14:55] Speaker B: Yes. [00:14:56] Speaker A: Yep, there is. And then he lived for, although you. [00:14:59] Speaker B: Never hear about his wife, and he's having these true extra ten kids. [00:15:03] Speaker A: That's true. [00:15:04] Speaker B: I mean, she never comes back into it. [00:15:06] Speaker A: No. And I think that's what I want to say about the pastoral dimension of this, is that we carry our wounds with us. You know, there's no mention here of the ongoing woundedness of job that would be utterly inevitable from what he's been through. And, as you say, the absence of the name of his wife and what that meant for him are gaps. [00:15:27] Speaker B: Yes. And that's a gap with his wife. It goes right back to the beginning when she says the only one thing she ever says in the book, and that is in. Well, she asked him, why don't you give up on your integrity or your faith? You know, this isn't worth. [00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah, this isn't worth anything. Yeah. Yeah. All right, I think we'll move now onto the psalm, which is psalm 34, one to eight. [00:15:58] Speaker B: It's an interesting sort of selection, too. I mean, it fits very nicely with the themes of job, although it does sort of take what we might say as a more traditional wisdom sort of perspective on the way that God sort of deals with us and cares for us over above the difficulties of life. It's an acrostic psalm. It's got 22 verses. One, or each verse begins with the next letter of the hebrew Alphabet. Whether this was just a scribal sort of practice to remember your Alphabet and develop that, or whether it was actually a skillful way of constructing a poem. [00:16:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Or sort of. There's an absolute order to that, isn't there? The themes here, are they. I mean, the suffering of life is disorder. So I don't know. Yeah. It's possible, isn't it, perhaps, that the acrostic nature of this is a way of bringing. Keeping a hold of or something, or ordering this messy life. [00:17:03] Speaker B: Entire thing is wrapped up within the context of it. [00:17:06] Speaker A: I mean, there's a lot of real emphasis on worship in this, isn't there? Like on go bless the Lord at all times. I mean, you know, if you didn't want to preach on job and those huge themes of suffering and healing and repentance and so on, do we bless the Lord at all times? As christians? How do we do that? What, in the tradition, how have we sought to live that out with our monasteries or our. [00:17:34] Speaker B: I think we need to be careful, too. Again, as you mentioned before in terms of preaching from job, when you get to the last section, the bits for the lectionary are divided in two. It misses out a chunk in the middle, but it suggests that you might use verses 19 to 22. But it's a very positive sort of thing. Many of the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all. Not everybody's rescued, even if they're faced. [00:18:01] Speaker A: Well, I mean, those verses pose the same problem as that resolution of jokes. [00:18:06] Speaker B: Do they? [00:18:06] Speaker A: Do you know, and I think you'd. [00:18:08] Speaker B: Have to be careful. [00:18:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yeah. We don't feel like this is really the case at all in our lives. The other thing I want to emphasize here is the very sort of the sensory. It's very evocative of the sense of this psalm. So taste and see that the Lord is good is like the center of this psalm. And obviously that's got eucharistic. [00:18:33] Speaker B: Oh, yes. [00:18:34] Speaker A: Echoes for us. We have open our lips and our mouths shall proclaim your praise as part of our liturgy as well. We're being asked by the psalmist to open ourselves up to the goodness of God, not only our mouths, but our minds. And so. And then the bit that's missing, too, in the psalm talks about God's own ears and eyes. So I think that, you know, in a religious tradition that might be very cerebral and word focused, perhaps in liturgies that don't always capture expressions of the senses, this is an invitation to do that. [00:19:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes. [00:19:21] Speaker A: Shall we move on to the gospel? [00:19:23] Speaker B: Yes. [00:19:23] Speaker A: The Gospel of Mark, chapter ten, verses 46. So the healing of blind Bartimaeus. This is like a. Some sort of resolution, in a way, to the section of Mark's gospel that's begun in chapter eight, where we have a repetition. Well, first we have another story of a blind person being made to see, but we also have this pattern of Jesus making some sort of an affirmation about himself, the passion prediction. The disciples failure to understand. They get called again and then moves on to the next chapter, where those three things happen. And here we have, like a resolution of. Of the misunderstanding ongoingly, with Bartimaeus totally getting the point and totally seeing Jesus. [00:20:36] Speaker B: And I think the thing to note, too, is that the two healing stories of the blind person back in chapter eight, and then Bartimaeus here in chapter ten, they are sort of bookends to the section in the middle of the gospel where Jesus turns his eyes towards Jerusalem and, of course, towards his death. And three times through that section, his disciples ask God questions and clearly show that they do not know or understand what Jesus is saying about and what his values are. [00:21:17] Speaker A: And that happens in chapter eight, chapter nine and chapter ten here. So we've come to Jericho, which is 15 miles from Jerusalem and down the bottom. So we're really at the lowest point. And it's also where, I think it's ched Myers and perhaps others who say this is where those who require arms like beggars would congregate here because they would expect the pilgrims on the way to Jerusalem are ready to, well, share food and money because they're almost there. They're almost there, the last stop. So, like most of Mark's gospel. The details are fairly sparse here, but we are told who Bartimaeus is the son of. And this is the only. His name. [00:22:05] Speaker B: His name literally means that? [00:22:07] Speaker A: Yes. And he's named here where the person blind in chapter eight isn't named, and nor is the hemorrhaging woman or the others whom Jesus heals. [00:22:18] Speaker B: His name bar is the Aramaic for son. [00:22:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:22:22] Speaker B: And he's the son of Timaeus. [00:22:24] Speaker A: Okay. Yep. I suppose I would want to just alert people to some themes that we think about now around disability in the Bible and how we deal with these texts. And I would commend Kylie Crabb in particular. Her website, biblicaldisability.org, has a bunch of resources to help us talk about these texts in congregational and other contexts, so that we're not insensitively assuming that we are all, most of us, normal and healthy. And then there is this disabled category that we all live with. Limitation. There are huge nuances around those living with disabilities and who wishes to be healed or not. And there is the issue that in these texts, often these, the characters portrayed with disability are kind of there as a sort of narrative tool to help the story along or to help us see who Jesus is. And I think that the theological point of this particular story and what's happening does skirt around those issues a bit. But I just wanted to alert people to think about those issues when you've got. [00:23:52] Speaker B: The story itself is an interesting, and, I think, reasonably accurate description of the way often people are dealt with in those contexts. He's at the side of the road. It's the only place he can be. He's pushed to the side by others. [00:24:07] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think recent scholarship of how disability is portrayed in early christian writings might want to say that disability was so common, really. They weren't all on the outside, you know, like there's this essentialising of how they were treated in. As these texts are portrayed, that I think some scholars want to be careful that we don't bring those assumptions into the. Into the modern way. So just to be alert to your assumptions about these things and how you use the imagery and how disability, like blindness, might be used as a metaphor a lot, and how we can speak about that with greater pastoral sensitivity as well. [00:24:48] Speaker B: I mean, it is a metaphor in this particular text, but we got to be careful how we do that, where we push. [00:24:54] Speaker A: So here we have. He heard that Jesus of Nazareth was there and he began to shout out. So there's an absolute urgency of request and call from Bartimaeus. And here he names Jesus son of David. No one has done that in Mark. [00:25:15] Speaker B: And it's going to be important for what comes later on in terms of what kingship means. And the entry into Jerusalem is of a descendant of David. [00:25:23] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And he also, you know, whereas the disciples asked, who could be the greatest? You know, when they're asked, Jesus asked them, what are you going on with? Bartimaeus here says, have mercy on me. So there's this completely different posture. Yes. And the crowds hindering and trying to control him and remove him as a, you know. Yes, be quiet. But he persisted even more loudly. [00:25:53] Speaker B: That episode of James and John sort of wanting to know who's going to be the greatest comes immediately before this in the story. So we're sort of well aware of. [00:26:02] Speaker A: Bartimaeus is showing them up big time. Yeah. [00:26:05] Speaker B: Yes. [00:26:06] Speaker A: And he, even when he's tried, they tried to silence him, he's even more insistent. And I like this. Jesus stood still. So I suppose, you know, the image that Jesus was perhaps walking along and suddenly stops when he realizes this person and says, call him here. And so the language of call is very repetitive through this passage. Take heart. Get up, he's calling you. And he threw off his cloak. And again, this is a juxtaposed with the rich man who was unable to get rid of his multiple, his wealth, and follow Jesus. But this Bartimaeus has only a cloak, and he throws it off and he sprang up and he came to Jesus. And what I think is important to identify here, too. And we've just been alluding to passages wherever I. Those with impairments may be used as sort of tools in the narrative. But here, Bartimaeus has absolute agency. I mean, for a start, he shouted out urgently. But also Jesus asks him, what do you want me to do for you? And then Bartimaeus answers him, let me see again. So I suppose the point, you know, we can have conversations about miracles and all that, whether they happened or not, which is really boring and a bit like sort of trying to work out if job was a real plot story kind of, you know, really happened. [00:27:45] Speaker B: That's a distraction. [00:27:45] Speaker A: That's a distraction. You know, did Jesus really bring sight to this blind man? But the point really seems to be, can we see? Like the disciples have shown repeatedly, as we've seen, that they couldn't see, despite being as close as they could have been to the action. [00:28:02] Speaker B: And Bartimaeus can see even when he is blind. He can see. [00:28:06] Speaker A: He can see. And so the challenge for us is, are we blind to Jesus? The first thing, Bartimaeus doesn't just see, he sees Jesus. It's not like he sees a tree or sees, you know, he just sees Jesus and isn't even then prompted to go, go and do this, go and do that. He doesn't go home to say to everyone, my goodness, look. I can see now. Isn't this amazing? [00:28:30] Speaker B: He follows him. [00:28:31] Speaker A: He just follows. [00:28:32] Speaker B: Yes. He follows him immediately, which I think has implications for what's going to happen next. I mean, next is the triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Jesus is almost in Jerusalem. The disciples in the last three chapters have resisted the thought that Jesus might die and aren't able themselves to bear or to drink the. What he has to drink metaphorically. And yet here is a blind man whose faith has made him well, and he immediately follows immediately, which is that. [00:29:10] Speaker A: Word in mark that comes up that's not here. Yeah, yeah. So there's. I mean, as someone to. Someone, a scholar like Chad Myers would also, you know, all of that would talk about the massive social, political and economic significance that it's barter, mass, the blind, the beggar, in contrast to the rich man, etcetera. [00:29:30] Speaker B: Well, in contrast, and the disciples as. [00:29:33] Speaker A: Well, and the kingdom of upside down, you know, the topsy turvy kingdom is dawning. So there any. There are. I mean, there is. There is a link, perhaps with job here, and you might draw it from the line that when Job says, I wanted to see you, God and you, I haven't got it in front of me now. But there's seeing. Job asked to see God, and he was satisfied that God showed God's self. [00:30:05] Speaker B: Now my eyes see you. [00:30:07] Speaker A: Now my eyes see you. There is quite a poetic connection between those texts. [00:30:12] Speaker B: Yeah, I think you could draw them together. I mean, the thing that sort of struck me as I was sort of looking at the lectionary, is that Job doesn't understand why he's suffering innocently. He regards himself as innocent, quite rightly, as acknowledged by God later on. And however we view the ending, I mean, the way I'd view it is that job doesn't quite understand why, how the world works, why there is innocent suffering. But he is still a man of integrity, and I think integrity that he holds is really his faith. He retains that even though he doesn't fully understand how things work in the world in relation to God. The bit that's added at the end, the sort of giving it the good ending, I think, wants to say something beyond his experience up to this point, which is his earthly experience, all our earthly experiences that there is something beyond, even if it's a bit fanciful in the text, God is nevertheless there with him. And I think that's true here. The disciples are blind from eight, chapter 827, through to this passage, or just before this passage, and yet now a blind man actually sees and follows immediately on to what lies beyond that lack of sight. So I think in both cases there are different lacks of sight, one quite understandable in Job's case, and one because of the disciples not really understanding the. [00:31:54] Speaker A: Values and the nature of that kingship. [00:31:56] Speaker B: Yes, but both of them sort of want to say God is doing something beyond that and drawing us on into. [00:32:03] Speaker A: And of course, the nature of that messiahship, the suffering that Jesus endures, is a response for us, for christians, that builds on Job's response, that is, yes, we're not promised there'd be no suffering by any means, but. And we're not given an explanation and nor should we try to give one. But in Christ we are. Christ is in solidarity with us in the suffering and does and accompanies us and is sort of there in the absence, the apparent absence, and transforms it. And we don't go there as quickly, you know, as we might. That is, we don't go to that point. We stay with Saturday to honour the suffering, but knowing that the cross, well, the empty cross, shines back to us. Yep, I think that'll be enough for. [00:33:01] Speaker B: This week. [00:33:06] Speaker A: By the well is brought to you by Pilgrim Theological College and the Uniting church in Australia. It's produced by Adrian Jackson. Thanks for listening.