Fifth Sunday Ordinary Time – Cycle B
Job 7:1-4,6-7; 1 Cor. 9:16-19,22-23;
Mark 1:29-39
Did you have any reaction to the first reading this morning? Let me repeat some of it: “Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery? He is a slave who longs for the shade… So I have been assigned months of misery … My days come to an end without hope.” Is there a gloomier person in the scriptures than Job? Life is a drudgery, a drag, endless days, sleepless nights, months of misery, no hope, - ending with “I shall not see happiness again.” And we all answered in unison “Thanks be to God.” It is as if we are saying that there is a value, a grace if you will, that comes with suffering.
Job’s laments are feelings that we can all identify with in some way. They describe an experience of desolation as familiar today as when the book of Job was written. They raise the perennial question of the suffering: Why do I suffer? Why do the innocent suffer right along with the not so innocent? Everyone must confront these questions at some point in their lives.
But to appreciate Job’s suffering and to hear Job’s answers to this perennial question, you must first know the whole story. If you haven’t done so, I would strongly urge you to go home today and read or reread the small book of Job. It is a classic.
The book begins with the pious and upright Job enjoying every prosperity. But one day Satan comes to the Lord and proposes that Job be tested. Take away his prosperity and Job will surely blaspheme God. And so it happens. His business fails and he is left a pauper. During a party at his oldest son’s house, the roof collapses in a violent windstorm, killing all ten of his children. Job himself is stricken with a strange disease that the doctors cannot diagnose or cure. And Mrs. Job offers little support, extolling him to “curse God and die.” But Job does not complain against God. Instead he seeks comfort in the company of his friends. They prove to be of little help, telling Job that he must have really messed up bad for God to have punished him this way. Job examines his life and finds nothing to justify his suffering. Job eventually reaches the conclusion that even the just must suffer, that we cannot begin to understand the ways of God. His conclusion is summed up this way: “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job’s words can be comforting to us in times of sorrow. But we know that there is yet more. God is a God of compassion. To fully understand what compassion means, it helps to start with the Latin roots. It comes from two words, cum meaning “with” and passio meaning “to suffer.” Thus compassion means to suffer with someone. As followers of Christ, we believe that God suffers with us all. God is not an uninterested bystander. God is intimately involved in our suffering.
In today’s Gospel passage, we find Jesus going to the home of Simon Peter. He cures Peter’s mother-in-law of a fever. Jesus is soon overrun by all those who are sick or possessed by demons. Early the next day, Jesus slips away to a deserted place to pray, but he is soon interrupted by Peter, asking him to return and perform some more miracles. Instead, Jesus reveals his true mission – “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose I have come.”
Jesus could cure the sick and feed the hungry – but that was not his purpose. Yes, he could walk on water, calm stormy seas and transform water into wine, but his true mission lay beyond miracle cures and healings. His real purpose was to preach about the Kingdom of God. As God, he came to feel compassion for our suffering, to suffer along with us, not to end it. While it’s true that compassion does involve acts of kindness and concern for others, its core meaning is to suffer with someone. Jesus’ true mission is to proclaim the gospel. It is through both his words and his actions that the heavy weight of life’s burdens can be lifted from us.
I felt like Job once. When I was sixteen years old, I was involved in a terrible automobile accident and I was badly injured. I spent about a month in the hospital and another three months in a wheelchair. I was the lucky one. The young man in the passenger seat next to me was killed. So in addition to the physical injuries, I had to deal with the mental anguish of knowing that my actions had caused another person’s death. It was a very long and painful recovery but thanks to my family and friends, I was able to heal and go forward with my life.
While I was in the hospital, there was a nurse who meant a great deal to me. She always found a few minutes to stop by my room and talk, even when she was working in another part of the hospital. We talked about school and friendships. We talked about movies and music. Sometimes we didn’t talk at all, just watched TV together. Now that was compassion. Not trying to “fix” me. Not preaching, not searching for religious reasons to explain the suffering. Just being present and suffering with me.
The real answer to the question, then, to the question raised by Job is found in the cross. The cross is the clearest expression of God’s compassion. When we look at the cross, we are reminded that God is suffering with us. No religion can take away suffering. But the great consolation the church offers is the sure knowledge that God is present in our suffering.
When we encounter suffering in our lives, in our families, at work, we may be tempted to think that we suffer alone. But the rebuttal that comes from the cross is this: our God is a God of compassion. God suffers with us.
Deacon Darryl J. Diemer
5th Sunday in Ordinary Time
February 8, 2009
