A reading of the holy gospel according to Saint Luke. As the time approached, when Jesus was to be taken from this world, he firmly resolved to proceed toward Jerusalem and sent messengers on ahead of him. The messengers entered a Samaritan town to prepare for Jesus passing through, But the Samaritans would not welcome Jesus because he was on his way to Jerusalem. Now here you have to you understand how you have the Lake Of Galilee in the North and you have Judea and Jerusalem in the South. Between the two, you have Samurai or Samaria.
And they had broken they were Jews, but they had broken away from the Jewish tradition. And there was nothing but bitter animosity between the two. Bitter. And still is. But there are very few Samaritans left.
So they entered a Samaritan town to prepare for our lord's coming through the town, but the Samaritans would not welcome them. Now when his disciples, James and John, saw how they were being treated by the Samaritans, they said, Lord, would you have us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them? Jesus turned to his disciples to reprimand them, and then they set off for another town. And this is the gospel of the lord. In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit, amen.
Today, we began our our our first reading is from the book of Job. Now from time to time, it may seem to you from time immemorial, I have been trying to stress the idea that you cannot get a very good notion of a human being by considering piecemeal all his parts. It's alright to talk about what bones join the other bone from the ankle up to the thigh, but the point is you don't get a very good concept of a human being from that. Now a work which has some literary merit, and it's of a it's commonly accepted that the books of the bible have some literary merit, whatever else they may have. They have endured, remember.
That's the only test I know what we call that monumental and funereal thing called a classic. However that may be, this book of Job is one of the most tantalized books of the old testament, one of the best known. It has its origin way back. We don't know where its origins, how far back, or where they actually were. Well, long before I ever read the book of Job, I I had heard this thing called the patience of Job.
Well, after reading that book I said, where in the heck is his patience? Because he seems to be an utterly impatient man with all that came to him. But now you won't get, you will not grasp this story of Job without reading it in its entirety. It's a classic, if I may dare use that word without making it a four letter word and almost isolating it. But the thing is, this is a great, great work of literary of merit if it if it hasn't anything else going for it.
It is so terribly, downright human. And yet at the same time, so completely tied. That's the only word or anchored to God, to almighty God. Remember, this is the old testament. There's nothing about Jesus Christ in this.
There's nothing about the cross or the patience or the promises that our Lord gave or telling us if we carried his cross that we'd find it light. There's none of that. This is Old Testament stuff. And the great idea is that there's an almighty god, and he's running the show. And this world is the whole thing.
And if you do god's will, if you obey his law, he'll treat you kindly here. You will prosper. Your flocks will increase. You'll have plenty of sons, and you may even have some daughters. They didn't seem to count for so much in those days.
You will have your granaries filled. You will have in other you will be a big man because God will reward you in this life if you obey his law, if you if you submit to his will. On the other hand, if you don't, you'll get clobbered. Well, here's the good old Job, you see, who's been a who's been a model, who's been a good God fearing man in every way, who has shown by his successes, his wonderful family, the size of his flocks, the size of his herds, the how much wine he's accumulated, the whole caboodle. That certainly shows that God loves him.
And then and then without any reason, everything deteriorates. It gets smashed. He he's abandoned. He finds himself out on a dung heap. Now how do you explain that if God is good, if God rewards those who follow and love him and do his will.
How do you explain that when Job did all of that and winds up an outcast on a dunghill? Where do you find the patience of Job in this book? Just did you pay any attention to the reading this morning? How sentence after sentence after sentence this man saying, why was I born? Why didn't my mother kill me?
Why would why didn't she let me starve at her breast? Why did she have a man child? Is that the sign of a patient man? And then it gets worse as you get into the book. Because Job's best friends who were mighty good Jews, you see, when they see what's happening to poor old Job, they'll say, look, we knew he was a good man, but he there must have been something evil in him.
He mustn't have been as good a man as we think. He must have been a a first rate hypocrite. Otherwise, he could not be suffering this way from a mighty God. Now, you see, these poor guys could not associate, could not get any reasonable explanation of why Job, this model of integrity, of love of God, of doing his will, of abiding by the law, that this man should be so terribly cast out. Everything taken from him, his wife, his children, his flocks, his herds, his home, his farm, his health, everything goes.
And he's flung out on a donkey. And here these good friends of his are saying, Job, now be honest. What did you really do that was so bad? Come on out and tell us. You know this is a very dramatic story.
Of course it has been dramatized. But I urge you to read it in its entirety to get the it's a big it's an argument you see. It has unity, coherence and emphasis. And you all know when you wrote an essay that every good teacher said, if you don't have unity, coherence and emphasis, you are no writer. This has unity, coherence and emphasis among other things.
And you'll only get the unity, coherence, and nemesis as you read the thing in its entirety. And it's not the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's a tiny little work. You can read it in one sitting without any trouble. But it's a powerful book.
And the one point I want to make is Job was not a patient man. He was impatient. But but he was impatient with faith and confidence in almighty god. He didn't hold in his feeling. Just read what has been read to you this morning.
Get that book of Job and read it. You can get it in little pamphlet form and see how exuberant he is, how absolutely almost blasphemous he is, almost blasphemous. But he will not admit that God is wrong. He will not admit that for some reason, God is unjustly treating him. He will not admit that.
He can't understand it. Of course, he couldn't under can you understand the problem of evil? Can you explain the horrible things that happen to people? And they are horrible. Some of them, they are terrible.
There's no way out of it. Just yesterday, heard of here are a young couple out here on one of our roads going over to Sears to pick up some kind of a kitchen appliance on a Sunday morning, driving quietly along their way in a small truck When a guy a dope addict hits him at 75 miles an hour, the husband's thrown out and dies. The wife survives, the guy who hit him dies instantly. Whole life is ruined. Whole life.
Why? What did they do wrong? Why did God clobber them that way? How can you explain a benevolent God who treats his friends that way? How do you explain it?
I don't know how you explain it. Neither did Job. But Job didn't despair. He didn't blame God. He never, never, he never challenged God's justice.
Nor did he say that, well, maybe you are right. Maybe I wasn't such a good man. No. He knew he was a good man. There is believe me, folks.
There is no there is nothing in anybody's literature, oriental occidental, which has such a dramatization of the problem of evil as the book of Job. Read it. In the name of the father and the son and holy spirit. Amen.