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before I get to the scripture, let me just acknowledge our dear president, members of the Board of Trustees, faculty and staff and alums of this fine institution. Thank you for allowing me to share with

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you tonight. Okay. I'm beyond honored and somewhat starstruck to be here this evening to be in the company of great theological minds like frank Yamada, willie Jennings, Cynthia Briggs Kittredge. These are towering figures

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in theological education. And that says something about the quality of the academic enterprise here. Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary that you take this time out and dedicate resources each year to bring in the best and the brightest

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to all of the alum C and to all of you and to everybody who's watching. I understand. In another room we thank God for you because everybody is somebody in the house of the Lord. Listen

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to scripture for the evening second chapter of the Book of Job. I see my dear friend, salamoni , reverend alimony here, actually just out in the best of you and I was sharing with President Wardlaw

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, I was confessing something I was saying, I was saying, come quietly, I've got a man crush on Blair mony and President Ward Lau said I've got a crush on Blair Mountain. Seems everybody has

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a crush on Blair Mountain. The second chapter of Job. Mhm. I want to lift a particular verse up Then his wife said to him, do you still persisting your integrity, baby? Curse God

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and die, curse God baby, and let go a love Supreme Lord. Why? I'm pretty confident that everyone here has asked that question. Maybe it was a grim diagnosis from the doctor, Maybe it

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was the loss of a loved one. Maybe an act of indescribable evil or an unconscionable act of injustice , wow! No matter the particular circumstance, Regardless of the situation that impelled your lament, this is

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one of the most perennial and most pervasive prayers of God believing people. Lord, why Lord I was raised to believe that you're good and that you're good all the time. Lord, I came to sunday

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school and then seminary and I learned that you were omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent. So, Lord, tell me this, what am I supposed to do with this? How am I supposed to reconcile my

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faith in your goodness and power with the certainty of my pain and my suffering? These questions are what we call the problem of the odyssey. Around these parts. The combination of the greek words for God

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and justice theocracy. It's our attempt to make sense of or justify the ways of God when evil and injustice in pune, God's character, Scottish philosopher, David hume posed the problem in this way. Is

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God willing to prevent evil, but unable, then God is impotent. Is God able but not willing , then God is malevolent. Is God both able and willing. Then from where does evil come from

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? Tonight's scripture, my friends is an ancient response to humans. Query. It's the book of joe . I'm among preachers, theologians and biblical scholars. You know, the story jobs a righteous man,

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right? He's blameless and upright before God. He's wealthy. He has a beautiful family and the link between his more righteousness and material rewards. A self evident in the text. He's what some texas,

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preachers might call prosperous. And it's this perceived prosperity is why satan the great obstructionists and serial accuser shows up on the scene. Satan wants to challenge God by exposing job. He wants to pull the curtain

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back on jobs. Disingenuous, piety, Satan says to God job, he isn't all that jobs of fake and a phony, you gave them bountiful blessings , a beautiful family and you gave him all the

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best breaks in life. Why witness show up in church every sunday. Why wouldn't he read the songs responsively recite prayers of the people and prance around town proudly and piously look at it. He's around here

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acting like he hit a triple when you put them on third base. Yeah, but let me have at it. Not only will I show you that job is not that good? I'll show you that

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he doesn't think you're that great and like an aspiring and ambitious hit man at the table of Tony soprano , satan goes off to destroy literally jobs life with God's apparent permission. Oh, my brothers and sisters

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. I don't have the time to point out all the problematic dimensions or prominent interpretations of this tale. Nor are you alone, if you think this poem presents a petty and egotistical deity, that sounds more

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like a descendant of Kronos, the great greek titan . I can hear the words of Earl of Gloucester and Shakespeare's king Lear as flies to wanton boys. We are to the gods, they kill us for

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sports. Traditionally. This fable in this poem introduce us to a few competing responses to the problem of evil. one response, dr Yamada for instance, it's the theocracy of recompense. We can most easily

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describe this, the odyssey as one of calls and effect. We reap what we sow. Uh This is the view of the position of jobs. Three friends, LF as Bill Dad and so far and

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the poem, These friends, they assembled the comfort job, but they only end up making them feel worse than before. God is just they proclaimed and God's judgments are always right. So it's evident that

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God has allowed you to be delivered into the power of your own transgressions, joe understandably, joe resists this explanation. In fact, this is the intended wisdom of the poem. It's to push back against

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such theologically immature explanations. Yeah, sure. Sure . We should all accept responsibility for the implications of our actions. Sure. We should all be mindful that both our actions and our inability to act can

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lead to the perpetuation of suffering in our world. Yes, we must acknowledge that this is why when it comes to evil and injustice, none of us should be walking around bragging about our innocence from the

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words of James Baldwin, quite often it's are assumed innocence that constitutes the crime. But having said this , you and I must also resist insensitive and uncompassionate explanations that more often than not lay the blame of

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suffering at the feet of its victims. Yeah, that's what jobs friends are doing in this poem. Go ahead and repent job, unburden yourself of the sin of pride and confess that you've got yourself in

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this mess LF as build ad and so far are holding onto a logic that they may find comforting for everything. There is a reason. But if you live long enough and you've lived well enough, you

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understand that this logic does not square with reality more tellingly. Isn't it funny how it's easier to give this sort of glib explanation for suffering when you're talking about someone else somewhere else? It's incredible how high

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our tolerance level can be for somebody else's pain. That's why some of us use the language of deserving or undeserving poor. Mhm. As if some of us have any idea how expensive it is to be

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poor in this country. That's why we use the language of handouts and welfare when it comes to working people and government assistance. But we use the language of tax incentives and deductions when the government hands out

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to the welfare. And this is why some of us want the government to show up yesterday when a hurricane hits in our front yards. But when it comes to a place like I don't know, Puerto

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rico are outraged, doesn't make it past tonight's news cycle. But let me be clear. Not only do we do it to others, we also do it to ourselves. Many of us appeal to untenable

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theories and unsustainable logics to explain our own suffering. The hebrew bible scholar Carol Newsome points this out in her compelling book on job. She says our passion for moral order is really a passion for security and

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power. We would we would rather be guilty of the hair sea of certainty than acknowledge our anxiety about the uncertainties of life. Some of us would rather blame ourselves than live with the unknown. If only

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I had been there, my father wouldn't have died if I didn't let my daughter go on that trip . This never would've happened. And when given a choice, some of us prefer guilt over powerlessness.

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We take false comfort and flawed explanations. We refuse to accept the first rule of faith, that they are just some things in life that we don't have any control. Theocracy of recompense. Not only have

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scholars appealed to a theocracy of recompense, but others have also identified another explanation for evil, and that's suffering as a test of our character. Recall how the fable begins God as satan what he's been up

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to in satan replies, I've just been going to and fro in order to see who I might accuse , and in jobs heroic and herculean response to suffering . He secures his place in literary history and in

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our religious imaginations as a moral paragon of patience, an ethical exemplar of the faith. Some of the greatest lines in literary history extend from jokes passing the test the Lord gives and the Lord take it away

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. Blessed be the name of the Lord, or that powerful proclamation of pious resignation when job declares though God slay me. Yet I will trust though this makes for an inspirational poem. Do y'all mind if

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I confess something tonight? It would be nice to say that I could handle all the trials of life with the resolve of joe. I also wish I was stronger than the locomotive and ca leap tall buildings

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in a single bounds, but I'm not there. And that's why when I read the book of job . Now, after having been through a few things in my life, it's not Job who gives me

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the most viable response to suffering in this text, You can have job, but I'm trying to have a conversation with jobs wife is this woman, this woman who has gotten a bad rap in theological history

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, we don't know a name, we don't know nothing about her. It seems that she was even just placed in the text as a proper, not a person. She's an unfaithful foil to jobs piety

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and jobs patients. But why should we view her through the framework that satan establishes at the beginning of the story, a framework that God seems to condone . Excuse me, people, I'm sorry if I

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sound irreverent, but amidst all of this testosterone fuelled wagering between God and the devil And amidst all this un affection, masochistic piety displayed by job, how in the hell is it that jobs wife becomes the

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evil 1? If anything, she seems to be the only one who seems human and operating from a posture of supreme love and devotion. Sure. And andro centric reading of this text privileges jobs suffering.

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But what about MRS Job? He lost 10 Children ? Right. That's 19 months of life developed in her womb while job is out collecting cattle. Those were her Children that's nursed on her breast and raised

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by her hand. Job lost his fortune. Right . Mhm. Well, what's a woman to do in a patriarchal society? When broken widows be taken off to live with some random man? Be forced

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into a life of prostitution? Yes, jobs body was stricken with disease. But for anyone here who has ever been in love, you know that there's only one thing that's worse than facing down a debilitating

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disease is watching someone you love suffer before your very eyes for who hasn't prayed that selfish but loving prayer that the bell we're told for you before your Children , before your life partner, so that you will

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never have to stand over there lifeless body. This is the sense of grief and dread. Mrs Job is dealing with and I'm confident this is what causes her to look upon her husband's fledgling and frail flesh

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and declare, Please honey, just curse God and die. And while some people may feel that such a declaration is blasphemous, our jewish brothers and sisters have helped us with this. That's what they call

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a theocracy of protests. This is to say while remaining believers, while remaining committed to almighty God, they reject all explanations of evil and suffering that refused to let God off the hook think about it to

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contest and even curse God is paying God the highest compliment for. It would be easier for jobs wife to deny God's existence. It would be more blasphemous for her to demonstrate indifference toward God. But it

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takes a level of despair and disappointment that can only be attributed to sincere love and devotion for jobs wife to muster the words curse God, we're not called brothers and sisters to have fear and blind loyalty to

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God, but we are called to love God. And it is plus to truly love someone and be deeply hurt and disappointed and angry with that person under the right conditions in his book, Could you today

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Nobel Prize winner and holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel shares the legend of a family. It was a legend of a family of jews who was sent into exile during the reign of King Ferdinand and Isabella for their

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unwillingness to convert to Christianity. So this family tries to make their way across the endless desert without food or water. one Night 4 fell asleep With only 3 to rise. The father dug a grave for

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his wife and then he recited the kaddish The next day three lie down, but to woke up, the father dug a grave for his son and recited the condition the final night the two laid down and

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only the father woke up and when he dug his grave in the sand, he said to God, this prayer, master of the universe, I know what you want, I understand what you're doing.

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You want despair to overwhelm me, You want me to cease believing in you. Well, I tell you know you shall not succeed in spite of me , and in spite of you, I shall shout

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the kaddish, which is the song of faith for you and against you. This is the song of Love. That grief shall not quiet. And if you believe like I do. If you believe in

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love and you believe that God is love. And if you have experienced the arbitrary nature of joy and paying sunshine and rain that's associated with love, then , despite setbacks and misfortunes, despite anger, agony

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and anguish, despite despair and discouragement, that's always tethered to the experience of love, you would never reject the gift that love gifts. Yes, Love may hurt. Yes, Love May disappoint. You

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may even want to curse his name, but if you were to ask mrs Job, I doubt she would give back all of the tender moments that love afforded to her love life. It's like a john

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Coltrane album. The notes can seem random and inconsistent . It may begin high and in seemingly on the blue note, but the beauty is not found in a single note, but in the totality of the

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experience. This is what life is like. It's not about a single moment, but it's the totality of experienced. And when you've experienced love, you know that love reigns supreme. I may not be

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able to explain suffering. I may not be able to explain injustice, but I do know how to combat it. And that's with this thing called love . Because for when I was thinking deep in sin

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, far from the peaceful show, very deeply stained within, sinking to rise no more. But the master of the sea heard my despairing cry from the water. He lifted me and now safe and my

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love lifted me. Love lifted me. When nothing else would help it was left. Hold it!