Is there a gloomier person in the scriptures than Job? Life is drudgery, a drag, endless days, restless nights, months of misery, time flies, no hope. Ending with, “I shall not see happiness again.” And we all say, “Thanks be to God.” Job makes you feel the weight of the world.
Now, Job has a right to his words. He has lost everything – possessions, lands, children, not only the shirt off his back, but even the skin off his body as it breaks out in boils. Job knows what it is like to be crushed by life’s burdens. He moans and groans for most of forty chapters, until God finally says, “Enough!”
I think we continue to read Job because he articulates a very real and true part of life – we all have those days when there is sadness, loss, loneliness, aching desire for love, days when we can find no reason to hope, when we feel crushed by life. He reminds us that it is all right to lament our loss, and to question and argue with God. But remember, Job does not lose faith. He holds on to God through it all.
The gospel today also has its share of gloom. It was the sabbath and Jesus had spent the day teaching in the synagogue, exorcising a possessed man, and healing the fever of Peter’s mother-in-law. When the sabbath ended at sunset and Jesus opened the door there was the whole town, bandaged and broken, waiting to be healed. They come carrying their loved ones – the sick, the weak, the elderly, the children. And they lift them up so he might touch them all. Jesus finally went to bed.
But, like Job, he couldn’t fall asleep; he tossed and turned while the night dragged on. That’s probably why Jesus got up at dawn. Mark says that “he went off to a lonely place in the desert; there he was absorbed in prayer.” This is the kind of prayer where hard decisions are made, where there is a battle with demons and a solitary look at the face of God.
The stories of Job and Jesus remind us that although our lives are spent with and for others, there are those days in our lives when we must face our God and ourselves alone, and make some hard decisions and then get on with our lives. The power of God is at work in us, for us, and through us.
This is the good news of today’s scripture stories. The power of God brings peace and reconciliation and forgiveness and mercy to others. And to this power we are called to witness for the sake of the next generation.
Paul A. Magnano
Pastor