This is a sermon that I preached on Sunday, 10/27/24, at Berkeley Friends Church. The scripture reading for this sermon was: Job 42:1-6, Mark 10:46-52. You can listen to the audio, or keeping scrolling to read my manuscript. (The spoken sermon differs from the written text.)
I don’t know what the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary were thinking when they picked these two passages to be paired for our readings for this Sunday, but I suspect they saw a common theme in the idea of vision – the ability to see. In the reading from Job, Job says that he has only heard about God, but now he’s actually seeing God. In the reading from Mark, the blind man Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus and approaches Him to receive his sight.
So there’s this common theme of seeing, of having vision restored, of seeing God. But apart from this common theme of sight, I feel like these two stories couldn’t be more different.
In our reading from Job — one of the earliest texts to be composed in what is now the Bible — Job has challenged God on the question of theodicy (the question of why bad things happen and why good people suffer). Job is a good man who has suffered a lot: the loss of wealth, the loss of health, the loss of children. Job has suffered so much, and he demands that God explain himself. Why has God allowed this to happen?
In response, God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind and demands to know what standing Job thinks he has to be questioning God at all. God says, “Where were you when the world was created? Where were you when I tamed Leviathan and set the world on its foundations?”
To this, of course, Job has no response. Job, being a good man, understands that he is not God and sees that he does not understand God. Job recognizes that the things of God are far beyond him. So in the face of God’s challenge, he surrenders. “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me that I did not know,” he says. “Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”
It’s a brutal passage; it’s an especially tough one for me because it fits so well with my own experience of life. I’m small, I’m limited, I’m out of control, and I’m angry about it. I don’t want to be out of control; I don’t want to suffer; I don’t want to lose things; I don’t want bad things to happen to good people, and I certainly don’t want bad things to happen to me. But they do, and they will continue to, so I ask God, “Why? Why have you allowed this to happen? Why do bad things keep happening to good people?”
To me, the story from Mark feels very different. As far as I can tell, there’s really no question of theodicy here. The Bartimaeus is not asking Jesus why God made him blind. He’s not demanding answers from Jesus. He’s not crying out from the side of the road saying, “Jesus, give me an explanation.” Instead, he says, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” Jesus’s response to Bartimaeus is to call him to approach, and Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?”
And what does Bartimaeus say he wants? He says, “Rabbouni — Teacher — let me see again.” And Jesus tells him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” But Bartimaeus does not go. He rejoices before everyone and follows Jesus in his triumphal procession into Jerusalem.
So we’ve got these two stories: one in which Job, a good man who has suffered unjustly, questions God about why such terrible things should happen. God responds with his presence, which for Job is overwhelming and incomprehensible. Healing and restoration comes, but only through darkness and terror. On the other hand, we’ve got a story where Bartimaeus, who has suffered blindness, calls out to Jesus for healing, and his sight is restored in a miraculous public display. Both of them see the face of God, but it’s a very different kind of face that they see.
It’s tempting to pick one face over the other. Historically, many Christians have made that mistake. Some of us have insisted that God is approachable, loving, and present with us in Jesus, ready to heal us. In this view, the nature of God is all pure love and understanding for us. And that’s true; that’s a true statement about who God is. But there’s more, isn’t there?
Then there have been Christians throughout history who have said no, actually, God isn’t here to make you feel good. God is wrapped in darkness and mystery. He is so far beyond anything that we can understand that we should all stand in fear of Him. Fear and trembling is the right response to the presence of the Creator of the cosmos, who was in the beginning, created all things, comprehends all things, and is beyond all things — far beyond where our limited understanding can possibly reach. In the presence of such a God, whom the author of Hebrews calls “a consuming fire”, what else is there but to tremble in awe and wonder, to be humbled by His presence?
That’s a true statement too. That’s a true way of describing what it is to meet the Living God. But there’s more, isn’t there? God is more than just sheer mystery wrapped in darkness that leaves us trembling in awe. He is also concrete and personal and directly involved in our lives, just as Bartimaeus experienced on the road to Jerusalem.
Both of these experiences of God are real, but these are really different faces, aren’t they? The fact that these two true and real experiences of God are so different from one another has led a lot of good people with honest intentions to come up with some pretty terrible theology. Principal among this terrible theology is the idea that Jesus has come to save us from the wrath of God the Father. In this theology, Jesus becomes the good cop, and God the Father becomes the bad cop. In this view, Jesus is here to take the beating for us so that God the Father doesn’t clobber us.
And you can see where they get this, right? You can see how you could get there when you look at the God that Job experiences in the whirlwind, in all His majesty and terrifying power, and then you look again at the God that Bartimaeus experiences in Jesus, who meets Bartimaeus where he’s at, hears his plea for healing, loves him, and heals him, sending him on his way in joy. I can forgive many Christians who have fallen into the trap of thinking that this healing and compassion is what Jesus is about, and the terror and incomprehension of the cosmic depths are what the Father is about.
What I cannot condone is the idea that these are two different Gods; that Jesus is somehow different in character than His Father. I cannot accept the idea that the God that Job experienced is different from the God that Bartimaeus experienced.
But they do seem so different, don’t they? The experiences are so different. So what are we to make of that? How are we to understand the universe we live in, which is so full of God’s incomprehensible majesty and terrifying beauty, while at the same time experiencing God’s immanence and loving presence in the person of Jesus and in the people that Jesus sent to us through his Holy Spirit? How do we reconcile these two genuine faces of God?
That’s a real question. I’m not here to give you an easy answer on that one. This is something we need to chew on together and pray on together. What does it mean to worship a God who is majesty and glory and terrifyingly powerful, but who is also humble and loving and present and tangible and approachable?
A common theme that I see between the story of Job and the story of Bartimaeus is that both of these men are able to approach God because they are basically humble. Each of them is open-hearted and seeking God in spirit and in truth. Unlike Job’s friends, Job is not playing some kind of theological game here where he wants to talk about his ideas of God and be considered “correct”. Job has experienced way too much suffering for that. He doesn’t want to score academic points, he wants to meet God in person. He wants to understand.
Bartimaeus is a little bit different in that we don’t get any indication that he’s trying to understand anything. But Bartimaeus is like Job in the sense that he has suffered and continues to suffer, and in his suffering, he is reaching out to God and asking for help. He receives that help in the person of Jesus.
Now for Job, it’s the whirlwind. For Job, it’s the terrifying presence of the unknowable God. Yet even coming out of that experience, Job is blessed, and Job is vindicated. God states at the end of the text that Job was in the right, that Job had the right attitude. Despite the horrifying experience of meeting a God so far beyond anything he could comprehend, Job came away blessed. Just like Bartimaeus, Job came away with his sight restored.
How have you experienced the presence of God? Have you reached out to him in your blindness? How has he responded?
What are the depths of God that you are frightened of? What are the hard truths that you need to hear?
What is the suffering and trauma that you need to be healed from? What are the words that you need to hear from Jesus?
Can you hear him asking you, “What do you want me to do for you?”