The Paradox of Power
Job 38.1-41
Mark 10.35-45
Preached Canberra Baptist Church 22nd October 2006

Job, as we discussed two weeks ago, was a man who had struggled with his suffering. He wanted to know why it had happened. Rejecting the false comfort of his friends and their very pastoral (and, by the lights of the time, theologically correct!) line that it was all his own fault, Job desired to argue to toss with God, to find out where God lived and go round and give him a piece of his mind. Above all, Job wanted some kind of divine answer from God. He wanted to interrogate God and ask him the great question that every bereaved parent, every terminally-ill patient, wants to ask: “Why?  Why me?”

Unlike most of us, Job gets an extended, direct and absolutely marvelous response from God. It runs from Chapter 38 to 41! I could have cut the reading down a bit – but would you have wanted me to? In this wonderful chapter of poetry God responds to the enquiring Job.

Were you there when I laid the foundation of the earth? (v.4)
Have you commanded the morning since your days began, and caused the dawn to know its place? (v.12)
Have you entered into the springs of the sea, or walked in the recesses of the deep? (vs 19)

In these probing questions Job is confronted with the limitations of his own knowledge and power even as the majesty and providence of God is portrayed so powerfully, almost irresistibly.

The effect on Job is as one would expect: “See, I am of small account; what shall I answer you? I will lay my hand on my mouth. I have spoken once, and I will not answer; twice, but will proceed no further.”  (40.3-5)

It is well worth following through the conversation between Job and God. In one sense it doesn’t really get fully underway until chapter 40! In the end Job seems to accept that the only answer his suffering will get is the overall sweep of God’s majesty and creative power, his holding the world and its wonders in being. These four chapters of poetry (38-41) are the only answer to answer to suffering that Job receives – and yet it seems to be enough. For that reason alone, these chapters are worth studying.

The astonishing power of God seems to make the suffering of Job shrink into perspective. In the face of such wonder, who can complain about their personal circumstances? And isn’t this a common response to the problem of suffering?

When I visited a person recently who was having a tough time in hospital he said “I was talking to a staff member who told me – ‘When you look back on all this it will be just a little spot of time – it will all be put into context and won’t seem that bad at all’”. That’s a fairly pastoral way of putting it: in the broad sweep of your life and the power of all other experiences, this will just be a little point that is easily outweighed by the good times. There are more brutal formulations of the basic principle: Look – God is much bigger than you are, and infinitely more powerful: you just have to take whatever he dishes out. If you saw his power and majesty as Job did, you’d pack it in and go quietly too.

But there are some for whom suffering is not just a little spot, but the main event in life. I don’t know a great deal about art, but I have learnt that in the paintings of the western tradition the use of shadow or darkness is often crucial. In some paintings there is a dark space on the canvass, a kind of black ‘blot’, a dangerous and undefined mystery that threatens to grow and take over the whole field of view. For some people, suffering is not just a spot that power or time will shrink into proportion: it’s more a mysterious blot that threatens to take over the whole. Think of the evil of torture, which is now being talked about and increasingly defined and accepted in legal and policy discussions, even in the ‘enlightened’ countries of the west like our own. Imagine for a moment the experience of David Hicks or others incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay without charge or trial. Their plight at the moment will not be some small spot in their personal history. Think of the implications of global warming for all of us, for all who live ‘under the sun’. These realities are more the encroaching ‘blot’ that threatens to usurp the whole picture, not just some fleeting blip on life’s radar that some power, either the power of God, or the power of our own wealth or medical technology or cleverness, to shrink suffering to an acceptable and manageable dimension in life.

Human beings remain drawn to power – the kind of power that orders the world and puts everything in its proper place. James and John were certainly attracted to it. In Mark 10 they think that Jesus is a power player – that in the coming Kingdom of God he will be the one who orders the world and judges the sinners, and blesses the righteous. And they quite understandably would like the seats of power and privilege on his right and his left.  The fact that the others felt indignant about it when they heard shows that James and John were not the only ones interested in those seats of power close to the Lord.

The response of Jesus is quite startling: He says they don’t understand what they’re asking. He asks whether they can drink the cup he must drink or be baptized with the baptism he is baptized with – references to later Christian ears of his suffering and death. They confidently affirm: We are able.  Then Jesus says something very interesting: Yes, you will drink the cup and undergo my baptism – but it’s not up to me to order the places of power and glory in the kingdom.  The symmetry, the logic  of the discussion is suddenly and completely broken. Until this point their conversation has been built on the assumption that Jesus orders the kingdom and that those who share the cup and the baptism might share the seats! Jesus turns that completely upside down: yes, you’ll suffer with me, but how the kingdom is ordered is not up to me – I don’t have any power in that regard.

This passage is almost the mirror image of Job 38. There an all powerful God who orders and disposes the world dazzling puts into context the suffering of one man. In Mark 10, Jesus says we are going to suffer together perhaps more than you know, And I don’t even have control of the seating at the feast of the Kingdom”.

One of the mysterious and wonderful consequences of this, is that if Jesus didn’t know who the places were reserved for, then none of us do either. The Kingdom of God is such a radical reversal of all human order of precedence, that nobody knows who ‘counts’ in the Kingdom. This means that one or other of those destined for those seats beside Jesus, may be sitting in the pews of this church right now. Throughout my ministry I’ve met people who might just be one of them. The wonder is that nobody knows: the radical inversion and inclusion involved in the kingdom of God means that no expectation of precedence or honour can be entertained. In the Kingdom of God the rather elitist concept of “Who’s Who” becomes something like “Who isn’t?”]

Jesus totally inverts the dynamic of Job 38. From a powerful and dazzling God we have a humble and suffering servant. From a supplicant who wants an insight into his suffering and is given a vision of glory, we have two supplicants who want places of glory and honour and are promised the experience of suffering in solidarity with Jesus! And in the end, says Jesus – the seats of glory cannot be promised!

Jesus is hinting at the Cross, the foundational event of Christian faith, that which he exhorted us to take up daily as we follow him. The Cross is the great manifestation of the powerlessness of God, the great symbol of human suffering taken into the being of God. Far from the logic of Job which places suffering into perspective by dazzling it with the glory and power of God, the Cross strips away the power and glory of God and shows us naked, suffering, love, a love so unconditional that it cannot even order the hierarchy of its friends.

The great paradox is that the Scripture says this Cross, this naked, powerless, suffering love, is the most powerful force in history. The oldest stream of Atonement theology was the doctrine of Christus Victor – that in the Cross Christ triumphs over all his enemies, all the spiritual powers of darkness and hatred and manipulation. Later Atonement theory made it more personal but the earliest, primary strand of how we understand the Cross is that it was God’s great triumph over suffering, sin and evil. Instead of the dazzling power of God shrinking suffering to a manageable size, the self-emptying love of God transforms it, turns it inside out into peace and life and mutual service.

The ‘shrinking spot’ approach may be sufficient in many of life’s usual travails. But in a world where sin and suffering seem to be so pervasive, so threatening - a world of detention camps and the rendition of prisoners, and the warming of the the globe -  the paradox of power is profoundly subversive. The path of power just seems to make things worse. We believe it is the Cross, not celebrity or wealth or influence or military might, that truly transforms the world. We will cling stubbornly to love, and service, and even sacrifice, believing it is these things that make a difference. We will, with Job and all his friends, continue to marvel at the power of God in the wonders of creation, but at the end of the day, we will, with Jesus and all his friends, stand by the Cross and the new world that is emerging wherever it holds sway.